Leaving one musical education for another, Lindsay Dobbs left jazz school and came to New York City to pursue the world of Starla Online. In the world of Starla, music lives in a continuum of movement. With neither a beginning nor an end, Starla Online takes you through a door into a digital dream world.
Having drawn inspiration largely from Brian Eno, Starla Online’s debut album, ‘I Saw You In My Shadow,’ contains a mixture of lyrical and instrumental songs. One song that stuck out to me in particular was the instrumental track, “The End Room,” which reminds me of Angelo Badelamenti’s score for ‘Twin Peaks’ in its suspenseful surrealism. For me, the instrumental tracks on the album glue the album together to really feel like you’re hearing something that’s cohesive and singular in its journey.
This surreal nature I feel while listening to the album is not a coincidence. According to the Spotify bio for Starla Online, “some of Starla’s melodic and lyrical content is constructed by dream recollection.” This led to my first question for Lindsay where I asked her to elaborate on what this means exactly. It’s quite literal and she went on to tell me that during the pandemic, she wasn’t sleeping well and would wake up four, sometimes five times a night with new ideas for songs that she experienced while in her dream state. Lindsay decided she could use this to her advantage saying, “I think there’s something significant about reaching a meditative state where there’s no obvious criticism… when you’re awake and writing, it’s really easy to be critical and to stop yourself from finishing an idea, and in that state, I felt like all of that was lost.”
Speaking with Lindsay led me to greatly anticipate her album release show which was held at The Windjammer in Ridgewood, Queens. Taking the stage was Lindsay on synth and vocals, Andrea Schiavelli on bass, Leia Slosberg on flute, and Zeb Stern on drums. There was great musicianship all around and I especially took note of Zeb Stern, whose drumming was tight and gave a concrete backbone to Lindsay’s irresolute grooves.
I was so impressed by Lindsay’s ability to bring you into her dreams through her music. It validated what she told me about hearing the music in her dreamstate. I wasn’t completely sold on her hearing music in dreams until I felt what her music did, which gave the audience and myself a feeling of dream-like tranquility. As I looked around, only a few people were moving to the music, but most stood in a hypnotic stare as they became entranced in pixelation.
I’m grateful that Lindsay left jazz school and moved to New York. For many artists who have gone to study music, they find themselves in a template of rules and what is “right” when writing music. This style of learning treats music not as art or expression, but more similarly to a sport and stifles the progress of music, and progress is often made by breaking rules. With Lindsay’s departure from these rules, we’ve received Starla Online and see a new way of defining your own self-expression.