Powerful and romantic, experimental and surreal, Ingrid Karklins has created a work that combines ancient culture with modern technology, offering music that is as avant garde as it is roots driven. With Anima Mundi, Karklins has produced an album anchored firmly in the Latvian music of her ancestry, music defined by its intensely concentrated, almost haiku-like imagery.
Although frequently compared to Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson,
Karklins' cutting-edge style is completely her own. Her vocals, sometimes haunting and beautiful, other times stark and riveting,
wrap sensually around fiddles, pipes, synths, ancient lap harp and all manner of exotic percussion.While each song stands on its own,
Anima Mundi is fully realized, cohesive work that will elevate Ingrid Karklins' status as a truly original songwriter, composer and cultural innovator.
----Green Linnet Records
A timelessness that keeps the future and the past firmly in view, while being totally absorbed in the present. What sets Anima Mundi apart from her other work (and the work of everyone else around her) is that while previously she made exciting explorations into music, here she has made a full blown discovery. I always wondered "What is she going to do next " Now I wonder how she’s going to get any better than this. The songwriting is darker, deeper and more mystical. The music is more fully realized, complex and personal. And then there's the band; skilled, creative and adventurous. The heart of the hand is bassist Steve Bernal, who can fuse tradition, funk and outright outrageousness into a single phrase, and a phenomenal young drummer, Chris Searles. His skewed sense of timing, his intuitive ability to know where the silences are, and his open approach to unusual sounds and combinations reflects Ingrid's own attitudes and ideas.
---Cliff Furnald 4/25/94
"Karklins' multitextured set features lots of obscure folk instruments and recalls the odder layered vocal creations of Kate Bush or even Joni Mitchell on such tracks as (Never) Shake My Soul or She Said. Also outstanding are the sharp, funky edges of Ligo, the hypnotic air of Race The Sky and the poignant groove of Kas Dind."
One of the songs here honors the tradition of ancient spirits, and it's clear they have imbued the disc with their approval. The best way to experience this music ··· is simply to surrender and enjoy the imagery and musicality. it's weird, it's spooky, it's enthralling, it's not to be missed.
Passionate, uncompromising music...mysterious and evocative. Anima Mundi is an intimate album; some of the songs sound like private monologues heard over a great distance which manage to combine instantly appealing hooks with a depth and lushness that rewards repeated listening. Ultimately, it's a record that creates its own category.
Karklins portrays a wide range of musical emotions, from the dark overtones of Kas Dimd to the playful Between Breaths which is so well-mixed that its cleverly pluced pauses actually has the listener subconsciously gasping for breath. Karklins' lush voice, enhanced by her over-dubbed harmonies is relaxed and unimposing. You may not know what the hell she's singing on some tracks, but she sounds really cool singing it.
Her stringy, mongrel folk-rock breathes an acrid Old World dissonance sometimes heard in music by Bartok or Martinu. Karklins conveys in her sound an elemental, atavistic intensity. Anima Mundi is a ranging and fascinating album -- all the more compelling as it demands that the listener meet Karklins' exceptionally active musical imagination halfway.
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