“It was a really intense day of having soccer balls thrown at me,” laughs the Russian-born, Brooklyn-based musician Olga Bell about the imperiling moments she experienced during the video shoot for “Goalie.” “There were definitely a few bloopers where I was hit directly and we learned pretty quickly that for everyone’s mental health, not least mine, that it’d be better if people tossed them rather than kicked them at me.”
It’s a work ethic indicative of Bell’s uncompromising approach to creativity, a quality she shares with Björk, who, after hearing the multi-instrumentalist’s music, played it to her label One Little Indian – who concurred with the Icelandic icon’s glowing opinion and quickly signed Bell (“She’s one of my childhood heroes,” says Bell, “so it feels like a dream”).
While Bell is now one of a band of pioneering musicians (including Holly Herndon and Julia Holter) skillfully combining pop and the avant garde, her beginnings in music were a rarefied world away from the inclusive Brooklyn scene. Having moved to Alaska from Russia with her family when she was seven, the gifted musician spent the next 14 years studying intensively to become a concert pianist. At the end of her time at the prestigious New England Conservatory, however, it dawned on the increasingly restless Bell that perhaps the thing she’d been working towards for most of her life wasn't actually what she wanted to do.
Incitation EP – from which “Goalie” is taken – is Bell’s forthcoming release, and comes on the heels of last year’s critically acclaimed Krai, which was sung entirely in Russian. The mind-bending processed beats and (comparatively) minimal instrumentation of Incitation serve as a perfect platform for Bell’s remarkable voice, mirroring the unflinching, self-analyzing lyrics. “The EP is almost a solo howl,” says Bell, who created every aspect of the record. “It’s an explanation of things that really upset me, like failure and rejection, and the fact that your time is slipping away.”
In the video for “Goalie,” co-directed by Bell and Christina Ladwig, a stoic Bell stands serenely amidst the chaos of flying soccer balls. It’s a metaphor that encapsulates the singer’s enlightened, liberating realization that although you can’t always control the things life throws at you, disappointments and all, you can decide how you respond to them. In this case, it means creating some of the most unfettered and joyful music that contemporary music has to offer.