Singer and songwriter. Projects include Azure Ray, Harouki Zombi, O+S, Orenda Fink (solo), and Art In Manila.

Biography

Orenda Fink is excited to announce her new album, Blue Dream out August 19 on Saddle Creek. Orenda Fink has shared the album's lead track, "Ace Of Cups" with Paste Magazine and it's also available for streaming and embed at SoundCloud. Blue Dream can be pre-ordered now on CD and LP in the Saddle Creek online store. Fans that order the deluxe LP (Blue and Coke Bottle vinyl) will also receive a bonus Blue Dream Dream Journal handmade and inscribed by Orenda Fink. The journals, limited to 100, are hand screen printed originals made from vintage re-purposed books.

Throughout her time with Azure Ray and over the course of her solo career, Orenda Fink has never shied from exploring the darker edges of spirituality and the human condition. On her debut solo album Invisible Ones, Orenda explored traditional Haitian ritual and mysticism. She then followed that up with an examination of the Southern Gothic subconscious on Ask the Night. Needless to say, death has been visible in much of her music. On her latest album, Blue Dream, she looks deeply at the subject, reflecting upon a year-long meditation on death that started with a dog named Wilson and the words of Laurie Anderson.

"Just look at yesterday, and what you were doing, and how important it was, and how nonexistent
it is now! How dreamlike it is! Same thing with tomorrow. So where are we living? Tibetans
have unbelievably fascinating answers to that. This is what I'm studying because
my dog died." - Laurie Anderson

Orenda was sent this quote by her friend Nina Barnes after Wilson, Orenda's dog of 16 years, died. That year she found herself on a deeply personal search for the meaning of death. Pieces of answers, coded in riddle, came to her in dreams. Her dreams began to tell a story - about life and death and the afterlife, reality, and the fine line between the conscious and subconscious world.

She then spent the next year understanding the experience and filtering it through the musical inspirations of Smog, Violetta Parra, and Kate Bush to craft Blue Dream. The album truly came together at ARC in Omaha, NE with the help of producers Ben Brodin and Todd Fink (The Faint), along with drummer Bill Rieflin (Ministry, Swans, R.E.M., King Crimson).

Lead single "Ace of Cups" starts the album off by using the Tarot symbol of attunement and spirituality to explore the interconnectedness with the world and humanity that even death cannot undo. The haunting "Holy Holy" examines them directly with lines "We come into this world all alone/and we leave with not much more" and "I lay in bed/collect all my dreams/then I pay/someone to read them to me/the simple ones are just as they seem/but open your eyes/and they say so much more." Whereas "All Hearts Will Beat Again" displays ideas Orenda came to understand upon reflection in lines "It's a sign in the eyes/something in your smile/it's a nod and a wave from the darkness/but our hearts will beat again/and the love we gave will come back/but i don't know where or when."

Writing the album allowed Orenda to contemplate the experiences that precipitated it and explore new perspectives gained over the past year. This process left her with the belief that we can only be truly healed if we find our "interior God." How do you find your interior God? There are many ways, but she believes one of them is through dreams. Dreams being the closest way to have a direct experience with the all-knowing past, present, and future.