Rié is a singer-songwriter of rare melodic grace whose music resonates with the lush splendour of Karen Carpenter and the acoustic intimacy of Suzanne Vega. But there are signs in her sound of an artist teetering on the edge between MOR and the avant-garde. She came to music via painting, having studied Fine Art at London’s Central Saint Martin’s, she started releasing her first music when she was 19 under the artist name Rie fu . Since then, she has released a long-player of self-penned material almost every year – and in 2015 she toured around Asia. Now she is releasing new tracks - paying homage to Japan and to the UK - that prove she is entering her most intriguing phase to date. A Rié song might be about anything - she even has one about eyelash extensions - but these are merely the launchpad for a series of thrillingly inventive meditations on the human condition. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t write about,” she says. “I’d welcome the challenge of writing about the most unexpected thing. ” “Japanese poetry and writing are all about saying something through something else, implying obliquely,” she muses. “In a Japanese poem, if something is beautiful, you never use the word ‘beautiful’; you refer to it without spelling it out.” Paul Lester, September 2016 Press shot by Toshi Senda / Logo by Kotaro Hachinohe