Julianna Barwick is an American musician who was born in Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

 and raised in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

. Her music is built around multiple loops and layers of her voice. Barwick, who credits a rural, church choir upbringing for her unique sound, begins most tracks with a single phrase or refrain, then uses a loop station and the occasional piano or percussive instrument to build the song into a swirling mass of lush, ambient folk. She released her first two collections of songs, the full-length Sanguine and the EP Florine, in 2009 and 2010, respectively, before issuing her Asthmatic Kitty

Asthmatic Kitty

Asthmatic Kitty is an American independent record label founded in 1999 by a community of musicians from Holland, Michigan led by musician Sufjan Stevens and his stepfather Lowell Brams. Some were Holland natives, and others had come to attend local colleges and universities...

 debut, The Magic Place, in 2011.Her song anjos is used as the background score for the recent Levis "Go Forth" Ad Campaign.

Influences

According to the Allmusic she was influenced by artists like Cocteau Twins

Cocteau Twins

Cocteau Twins were a Scottish alternative rock band active from 1979 to 1997, known for innovative instrumentation and atmospheric, non-lyrical vocals...

 and Björk

Björk

Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...

 however music critics linked her to the most successful New Age musician Enya

Enya

Enya is an Irish singer, instrumentalist and songwriter. Enya is an approximate transliteration of how Eithne is pronounced in the Donegal dialect of the Irish language, her native tongue.She began her musical career in 1980, when she briefly joined her family band Clannad before leaving to...

 in their reviews like MusicOMH

MusicOMH

musicOMH is a United Kingdom-based website which publishes independent reviews, featues and interviews from across all musical genres including classical, metal, rock and R&B.-History:...

 and Pitchfork

Pitchfork

A pitchfork is an agricultural tool with a long handle and long, thin, widely separated pointed tines used to lift and pitch loose material, such as hay, leaves, grapes, dung or other agricultural materials. Pitchforks typically have two or three tines...

. Allmusic linked her music to Artists like Harold Budd

Harold Budd

Harold Budd is an American ambient/avant-garde composer and poet. Born in Los Angeles, he was raised in the Mojave Desert, and was inspired at an early age by the humming tone caused by wind blown across telephone wires....

, Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

s ambient works, Grouper

Grouper (musician)

Grouper is the solo project for electro-acoustic ambient/noise musician Liz Harris, of Portland, Oregon. Harris' music is a mixture of softly-strummed guitar, Wurlitzer keys, and delicate vocals...

 and How to Dress Well

How to Dress Well

How to Dress Well is the stage name of experimental pop producer and singer, ethereal/R&B artist Tom Krell, from Brooklyn. His debut album, Love Remains, was released in 2010 on Lefse in the USA and Tri Angle in UK/Europe/Asia. It received a score of 8.7 and the "Best New Music" designation from...

.

Early Works and Sanguine (2006–2009)

Julianna Barwick wove tapestries of looped ethereal vocals on the mini-album Sanguine. The nine untitled vignettes sound like snippets of Enya wed to eerie instrumental and electronic sounds, but the whole is so warped and dilated to evoke something halfway between a female counterpart to David Crosbys "If I Could Only Remember My Name" and yodeling folk music. Some of them create a symphony of ghostly echoes and galactic lullabies (notably the fourth untitled one, Red Tit Warbler and Sanguine), while others are inspired by childplays and ethnic chants, like a hippie version of Meredith Monk's lieder.

Florine (2009–2010)

The arrangements were relatively harmless on the first mini-album. The EP Florine (Florid), instead, added the instrumental dimension; and each of the six songs is significantly longer than any of the debut's songs. Anjos employs the technique of minimalist repetition of simple melodic patterns (of keyboards) to create a deeply spiritual experience. The vocal polyphony of "Choose" is equally intricate and dense, with murky percussion setting the pace. The lazy litany "Sunlight Heaven" returns to the ecstatic hippie transcendence, and "The Highest" builds up until it resembles an Indian hymn, while the haunting spectral multi-layered howl of "Cloudbank" is almost an abstract remix of Cocteau Twins vocalist Elizabeth Fraser

Elizabeth Fraser

Elizabeth Davidson Fraser is a Scottish singer best known as the vocalist for the pioneer alternative rock group Cocteau Twins...

.

The Magic Place (2011–)

Barwick started working on her album in mid 2010 and in early 2011 the album released by Asthmatic Kitty Records

Asthmatic Kitty

Asthmatic Kitty is an American independent record label founded in 1999 by a community of musicians from Holland, Michigan led by musician Sufjan Stevens and his stepfather Lowell Brams. Some were Holland natives, and others had come to attend local colleges and universities...

. The album was under New Age music

New Age music

New Age music is music of various styles intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments, and is often...

 and Ambient

Ambient music

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...

 and it was well received by music critics and also ranked as #35 of "The Best Music of 2011 So Far" in Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

. In an interview she talked more about album:

she was also one of the acts in Pitchfork Music Festival

Pitchfork Music Festival

The Pitchfork Music Festival is an annual summer music festival organized by Pitchfork Media and held in Union Park in Chicago, IL. The festival, which is normally held over three days in July, focuses primarily on artists and bands from alternative rock, rap & hip-hop, electronica, and dance...

 of 2011 on day 2.

Discography

Studio albums

• The Magic Place
  The Magic Place
  The Magic Place is the debut album by ambient artist, Julianna Barwick. The album released on February 21, 2011 by Asthmatic Kitty Records.-Background:...
  
  (2011)

EPs

• Sanguine (2006)
• Florine (2009)
• The Matrimony Remixes (2011)