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Stereo Stickman

Album Review "Materia Prima"

by Rebecca Cullen

December 1, 2025

Creative originality intrigues and connects, captivates in a refreshing way – a project of stories both mysterious and poetic. Liz Davinci captures an air of abstract contemplation, with the brand new album Materia Prima.

Set up in a kind of raw and live indie fashion, the album features acoustic guitars, honest moments of expression and vocals, unfiltered and organic performances.

Big Window City View is the opener and delivers a genuinely original melodic thread and vibe that’s intriguing. Then for The Circle and The Dot, the muggy acoustic strum of a guitar sets a fireside vibe, and again, the melody adds something a little alternative and mysterious to proceedings.

We’re somewhere between the likes of Kate Bush and The Last Dinner Party, only this is more stripped-back, personal, independent and passionate. The song The Circle and the Dot presents a list, an expression of uncertainty, perhaps a relationship disguised as a modern scene, with subtle to confronting reflections on love, loneliness; the highs and lows of a life. “The difficult parts of life, like when you have no time to sing.”

Things continue down this alternative and interesting pathway, with the darkness and bass-heavy groove of Hallucination depicting another curious realm of story. There are lyrical threads now, locations and ideas, feelings, connecting the songs of Materia Prima.

Next the mood is brightened, colourful and quirky piano fragments paving the way into a simple alt-folk song of seasonal relevance and appreciative self-reflection. Dynamite is boldly memorable, almost Regina Spektor-like in its playfulness and sense of searching.

After this, the vocal pairings and tones of The Simplicity feel both haunting and grounding in their stark imagery and the simple, spacious echo-chamber of the recording.

Imagery is key to this project, brief and sudden scenes and pictures from the natural world and memories of a life or experience. They feel personal but provoke thought for the listener of their own understanding, and Adamas is a fine example – short poetic lines both vague and specific intermittently. “Your lemon tree, seems to be, attended to by deities.” It’s writing that begs for a revisit, and the vocal layering, the honesty and uncertainty, all makes for an authentically original listen.

Lyrically Renovated Reality is a powerful highlight, and the music rolls on like a tired stomp or march towards some kind of hopefully hopeful resolve. Then for the softer key sound and smoothness of Golden Blue, we turn again to the self-aware process of writing songs, the back and forth between ‘you’ and ‘I’, wonders of the self and the greater good, the bigger picture, the world, always carefully compared and countered by each other.

A simple sound, a complex poem, an unfiltered and frankly incomparable melodic and structural approach – these are the building blocks of Materia Prima. Consider the theatrical, minimalist and quirky entanglement and intricacy of Bees on my left – an unclear thought, gifted a tad more clarity with each moment, and a change in key and aura as the expression gathers momentum; or perhaps starts to accept itself.

Something like Amanda Palmer shows influence for Black Lake Ballet, from intimacy to intensity and weight – “Somewhere over the rainbow, You sit in the shade pondering Plato.” Then to finish, crisp acoustic guitar picking adds lightness and longing, another list of images, scenes and smells, memories and moments clearly crucial to the state of mind and the artistic process. Your Old Letters is an alt-folk blend of traditional and unpredictable flavours, and it softly to chaotically wraps up the vast collection of pictures and emotions that is Materia Prima.

Liz Davinci’s writing is fascinating, these songs no doubt began as poems in the mind, and they lay down their foundations as such. Meanwhile the music fills the space, elevates the ideas, and lets the words hit with either warmth or poignancy, depending on the moment and the musing. The Latin title conjures up ideas, but there are no specific roots, no backbone to determine the intention, it’s left largely to the listener – and the joy of this is that interpretation is ultimately unique to each.