Moa

“When you’re a kid and you hear music for the first time, it’s this indescribably beautiful thing,” says Icelandic chanteuse Ma. “You don’t break it down to a series of notes, it just has this magical quality. That’s how I want my music to be.”

That may sound like too daunting a task for most, but Ma isn’t your average act. She’s a kaleidoscope of influences combining otherworldly electronic sounds with cabaret-style vocals, jazz drumming with classical piano, drum’n bass beats with feminist lyrics, blues with hip-hop. In other words, the 25-year-old performer is a true original.

“I’m influenced by so much, from cabaret singers from the ’20s to Massive Attack, but I never let myself copy or imitate,” says Ma who bears a strong physical resemblance to Uma Thurman. “That’s one of the reasons why I decided to be a solo act, because I wanted to feel totally unfettered by others. I wanted to feel free to experiment.”

You could say Ma was born to be an ingenue. She was six when she first started writing pop songs; at eight, she started taking piano lessons. “I grew up in a classical music environment,” she says. “The piano became my way of expressing things.”

Though she waited till she was 16 before attempting singing, she says she never doubted her vocal abilities. “The first time I chose to sing in public, it was on TV in front of the whole country,” she reminisces. “It was a national contest for high-school kids. I placed number two and I remember being so mad I didn’t win, I walked all the way home fuming.

Her first taste of singing proved an addictive experience because she immediately formed a jazz collective, which soon became the nucleus of the Reykjavik new jazz scene. “I discovered jazz very early,” says Ma. “Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald were among the first artist albums I bought for myself. I also remember hearing Billie Holiday when I was 12 and being blown away.”

The teenage Ma began garnering a reputation for taking chances with her repertoire and was invited to take part in a cabaret show called “Back to the Past” at Hotel Iceland, a club in Reykjavik. “The experience taught me a lot about combining theatrics with singing,” says the seasoned performer. “I learned how to create different types of atmosphere and it opened many doors for me.” Ma recorded her first album, a multilingual jazz CD that appealed not only to jazz purists but to the growing number of teens and 20-somethings tuned into acid jazz. But despite her growing success in jazz, Ma felt it was time to try something new.

“I’m quite schizophrenic with my music,” she says. “I went from jazz to hardcore electronica. I went from thinking only about songs to thinking more about sounds. The rave scene was happening and I wanted to explore it.” Ma hooked up with various electronic musicians and began recording vocal tracks over their mixes. Sometimes they would arrive at a rave with a DAT tape and hand it right to the DJ to play live.

“It was great because we would see right away how people would react,” says Ma “That’s the great thing about electronica, it’s very immediate.”

Right around this time Ma met Eythor Arnalds, a classically trained cellist and composer-turned punk rocker who was in the band Tappi Tikarrass with Bjork and then Todmobile, Iceland’s most popular band in the ’90s. The two attended the same classical conservatory but didn’t start collaborating until four years later. In 1994, they recorded a critically acclaimed electronic-meets-rock CD under the name Bong.

“I met my soulmate in Eythor,” says Ma. “We had the same ideas about experimenting with sound and combining classical with the new technology. We had been working in tandem but without knowing each other.”

The Bong CD led to six hits and spawned the longest charting pop song in Iceland’s history. The group even managed to get attention abroad and got signed by England’s Mega Records. But despite rave write-ups in everything from The Face to Melody Maker, Bong found itself without a label after a few months when Mega dissolved.

“It was a blessing in disguise,” says Ma. The Bong sound started becoming too rock for me. My mission was to combine the different elements that I love – jazz, cabaret, techno, dance, synth, classical, blues, you name it.”

Ma’s “mission” turned into her debut album “Universal.” She mined her own experiences to write songs that are more like personal statements than pop lyrics. Musically, she and Eythor teamed up with Bjarki, a 20-ish programmer who had inherited his older brother’s synths, samplers and record collection. Holed up in his bedroom, he put together hauntingly beautiful soundscapes, the perfect complement to Ma’s powerful vocals. Phil Chill and Brian New, fresh from their work with Neneh Cherry, (and previously Dave Bascomb, Tears for Fears and Depeche Mode) were brought in to produce. The result is an album that is as free, fearless and fresh as its title implies.

“I chose the name ‘Universal’ because it’s very important for me not to be dated or pinned down to a location,” says Ma. “I want my music to be boundary-less, open and spacious so you can truly explore it.” And there is something wildly innovative in the way the samples, sounds and beats wrap themselves around Ma’s vocals, which carry the tunes in unpredictable ways.

In the first single, “Memory Cloud,” Ma sings dreamily about how the past can push us forward. “We each have in our mind our own photo album” she explains. “We wouldn’t be interesting if we didn’t. And it’s those very experiences and memories that push us to our own unique futures. That’s how I came up with this image of a memory cloud following us wherever we go. It’s very surrealistic.”

Other stand-out cuts include “Tenderly,” based musically on a sample from a track by a singer from the ’20s called Zarah Leander, the playfully feminist “Toy,” set to a drum’n bass beat, and the catchy “Declaration of Love,” in which Ma boldly states her intentions to the object of her affections.

“Both ‘Toy’ and ‘Declaration of Love’ are a bit aggressive,” says Ma. “But women are allowed to be strong and assertive in Iceland. The former president of Iceland was a woman, the mayor of Reykjavik is a woman, and there are lots of single mothers here. My own mother raised all six of us largely on her own. Her strength is such an inspiration to me.”

“It’s important to stay up to date and challenge yourself,” she says. “We’re right at a new millennium and we’re getting much smaller as a world. Thanks to computer technology, you can be anywhere, anytime. This has a lot of implication for music.”

And just what is it about Iceland that seems to breed such originals? “Iceland is an alternative market,” says Ma, whose futuristic cabaret sound has already gained her a loyal following in England. “We’re allowed to take chances. Being different is what defines us.”