Listen: Doin’ Fine! by The Artist Ren

The Artist Ren is the musical project of Lauren Van Houten, who started creating music in 2020, during the early pandemic. With no label or management, she prides herself on working independently, and creating music that starts with a story. Lauren constantly makes notes on her phone — capturing thoughts, overheard conversations, things from media consumed, and imaginings.

Here on The Artist Ren’s latest single, Doin’ Fine!, sunny laid-back guitars meet a grungy swaggering bass line. The contrast at play in the instrumentation betrays the emotional through-current of the song itself, which centres on a relationship that is coasting in neutral.

Doin’ Fine!’s lyrics depict the small details that imply something isn’t quite right in your relationship — a forgotten birthday, misremembered preferences. At the same time the easy-breezy feel of the song’s instrumentation suggest that maybe it’s all okay. A break-up feels drastic and dramatic, doesn’t it?

Yet whilst the guitars retain their sunny, upbeat quality, The Artist Ren’s vocals become increasingly insistent. Just like those little signs in a relationship, the bass, and drums, become impossible to ignore… a thumping, visceral reminder that this isn’t the one.

Doin’ Fine! represents Ren’s first song in over a year. That time is not happenstance — it comes off of the back of some time out from making her debut album. During the gap, she spent a semester studying in Seoul, in South Korea. Doin’ Fine! is what came out of that time, musically. Describing the song, Lauren says:

“I feel like being able to talk with people from different countries and backgrounds while being abroad allowed me to hear so many new stories. I love writing songs about stories I’ve heard or imagined and Doin’ Fine! is no exception to that.”

In addition to listening in the post, you can find almost all the music BlackPlastic covers on the music player of your choice. Add the dedicated playlist below:

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Listen: Tonight by Velar Prana

The latest single from Velar Prana, Tonight opens with a lush wave of sophisticated sound. Slithers of brass instrumentation weave in and out of themselves, soaring and fluttering, as warm and crispy bass establishes a feeling of sun-kissed movement.

Having spent endless nights at turntables through his years at school, Velar Prana now writes, records and produces music. His focus is on what you hear on Tonight — a kind of warm electro-pop that glitters and captures the feeling of summer, and good times.

As Tonight progresses, a restrained vocal portrays a simple story — people working to communicating, and landing with the intention to say things as they mean them. Synth notes echo and bounce as Prana layers together a dense soundscape, and overall the song leaves everything else to the imagination. The result is a piece of electronic music that is dense and atmospheric, about the vibe more than anything… A dash of melancholy mixed with a hint of hope, surrounded by so much beauty.

In addition to listening in the post, you can find almost all the music BlackPlastic covers on the music player of your choice. Add the dedicated playlist below:

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Velar Prana · Tonight

Watch: Hair by Lelia

The new single from London-based artist Lelia, Hair starts with a ripping bass line and thumping drums, immediately delivering a dark sense of confrontation.

As an artist, Lelia builds her sound from a combination of thick synths, angular percussion, and direct confrontational vocals. With touchpoints that include artists who, on paper, appear very diverse — Lady Gaga, LCD Soundsystem, and PJ Harvey — Lelia weaves those references together to feel cohesive and, in retrospect, obvious. Of course the darkness of Harvey blends with Gaga’s penchant for drama, and the throbbing electronic post-punk rock of James Murphy underpins it all like a slowly boiled frog.

As we hear on Hair, the overall result is a beautiful cacophony. The third single taken from Lelia’s forthcoming debut album, Dark Disco, the song is an embrace of destruction, applying Daft Punk’s dance-forward production to a song that is a far more direct exploration of sex, desire, and identity.

Employing overdubbed vocals liberally against a backing that is grounded in grungy sounds and a hissing electro bass line, the sound here evokes a sense of size. Lumbering, heavy and formidable, Hair embraces exactly the kind of building details Murphy deals in — hi-hats and cow bell create a kind of disco punk crescendo as the song nears it’s conclusion. With a sound that is itself big, Lelia is deliberately evoking a feeling of scale, as she describes:

“It’s about rejecting everything material. If I make my hair as big as possible then, in a nod to Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958), I'll destroy anything in my path in the quest to dance and be free.”

I love the intersection of genres Lelia is channeling here, and can’t wait to hear more. Check out Hair below, and look for the album, Dark Disco, due 6 November.

In addition to listening in the post, you can find almost all the music BlackPlastic covers on the music player of your choice. Add the dedicated playlist below:

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Listen: All That I Break by Meleetah

Based in Brisbane, Australia, electronic artist, producer, and multimedia artist Meleetah works with music and audiovisual mediums. Focused on a combination of electronic pop, future bass, and electronica, the artist is focused on creating immersive worlds with a strong sense of emotionally driven storytelling.

Here on All That I Break, Meleetah reflects on the possible reality that the things that fall apart in our lives don’t just happen to us — they are themselves a response to our choices and out behaviours. It reflects a shift from blaming the outside, to evaluating our own actions and taking responsibility for the role we play.

Opening with soft bell-like notes, All That I Break starts from a place of vulnerability. Meleetah’s vocals hang amidst a glittering soundscape of synths, like a chandelier casting light around a stark and empty room, before the song introduces deep sub-bass tones. The glassy aesthetic reflects a feeling of mirror-like reflection that runs through the song… You can almost feel Meleetah reaching out for images, trying to grasp and hold on to what is real. Is our pain actually of our own making, or are we a blameless victim? The result is a piece that shudders with a bold futurist aesthetic, and a depth of emotion.

Check out All That I Break below.

In addition to listening in the post, you can find almost all the music BlackPlastic covers on the music player of your choice. Add the dedicated playlist below:

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Listen: Death Drive by Eliza Edens

One of my triggers in alt-rock is a sense of texture, and the first time I heard Death Drive, the latest single from Eliza Edens, I was blown away by the detail.

Texture adds a vibrancy to a musical recording, particularly when it comes to real physical instruments. The bright details here make Eliza and her band’s performance feel real, intimate and grounded. The bass and guitars float right in front of you, and you can almost feel the air moving in front of your face as you listen. The drums thump with a grounded pulsing energy. The whole thing feels expensive, and created with care. It all underpins a vocal performance from Edens, at terms intimate and vulnerable, then soaring on a wave of overdubbed harmonies.

That vocal is focused on Edens’ preoccupation with near-death experiences, and living dangerously. As she sassily sings here, “Maybe I was flirtin’ with the limit but baby that’s how you win it.”

Shortly after the two-minute moment there is a slight, yet noticeable, drop in pace. It is as though the band simultaneously got caught in something that caught them off guard. They almost miss a beat and fall into a stagger. The moment seemingly reflect Eliza, confronted with a thought, as she contemplates her own mortality and the afterlife. She quickly shrugs it off, and like a moth to a flame, goes straight back to thinking about all the ways in which she could be embracing reckless abandon. Overall, she creates a thrilling feeling - vivid, real, and alive.

Check out Death Drive below.

In addition to listening in the post, you can find almost all the music BlackPlastic covers on the music player of your choice. Add the dedicated playlist below:

Apple Music

Spotify