Listen: Venice - Magdalena Bay

Magdalena Bay are songwriting duo Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin. With both of them sharing vocal duties and Lewin handling production, the pair started writing music together in high school, working together to produce pop music as Magdalene Bay back in 2016.

Venice is Magdalena Bay’s latest single and it carries Mica’s hushed vocal along on a gentle groove that sounds a little like melody by clockwork. It is a little spellbinding, shimmering with the kind of breathless easy warmth I can’t resist. I’m not sure where Magdalena Bay actually come from, but Lewin argues “I think this makes us real Californians”, with the Venice in question being Venice Beach, as Tenenbaum explains:

“We wanted it to be a chill indie pop tune with an undercurrent about the world possibly ending. We tried to inject a little weirdness in there. Our own experiences of walking down the Venice Beach boardwalk probably helped with that.”

Check out Venice below.

Premiere: YTMYDLMS - LO feat. YOSIE

YTMYDLMS, is an acronym you’re somewhat unlikely to be able to parse without hitting play on this one, but its meaning (“You Told Me You Don’t Like My Songs”) gives you a sense of the feeling encapsulated by the song.

The newest collaboration between Berlin-based musicians LO and YOSIE, YTMYDLMS is a song that describes the sense of alienation that can stem from carrying other people’s expectations with you. With previous album Lights picking up 7 million streams on Spotify, the duo came back together in the studio to make music, and this laid back sounding but impassioned record is the result.

Describing the thinking behind the song’s lyrics, YOSIE says:

“YTMYDLMS is about freeing yourself from what other people want and expect from you. When making music and being an artist but in general in lots of areas in life, a lot of people try to tell you what they think is best for you. Often these free advices are advices that these people actually want to give to themselves. When working in the music industry the most important thing for me to realize was that judgment doesn’t work - not judging others nor yourself. When I write I don’t want to judge the song, I want to feel it, deeply, intensely and freely. So whoever is trying to turn you into someone that you are not or make you do something that you don’t feel, say thank you but no thank you and keep doing your thing. And if you want to, also send them YTMYDLMS.”

LO was inspired to create a song with a distinct nostalgic sound based on a specific picture and moment he was envisaging:

“With YTMYDLMS I wanted to create a nostalgic sounding production. I had a clear vision in mind: It should be a song you would enjoy listening to on a calm late summer evening or in the car, while driving to the nearest lake, The sound of it should be more dynamic than most other current productions, so I chose some pretty filigree drum samples and tried to keep the instrumentation and arrangement quite simple.”

The resulting track is one of gentle self-assurance and determination. The gentle production creates an easy-going sense of building calm - it’s the realisation that you don’t need to feel to feel someone else’s negativity, because it’s not yours, it’s theirs.

Watch: London - Alexina

Sometimes your memories and the places they took place in get ingrained into your psyche in a way that makes them impossible to separate. That bar that you only ever went to with someone who you no-longer have in your life in the same way, or that spot in a park where you first made out... Places with memories that were once happy become impossible to visit without being struck by a sense of loss.

It’s this experience that Alexina’s ferocious new single, London, addresses. “How can I stay in London, if I don’t have you?”, she cries. The quiet-loud-quiet approach turns a song of heartbreak into the kind of song that captures the feeling of dancing on the grave of the relationship that almost took you down. It reminds me of the kind of wonderfully sad dance pop records Robyn has been making for years.

Getting out of London becomes a defence mechanism, and it is one the video Takes to an extreme, Alexina driving around London as she douses the places that evoke the most painful memories in petrol. Sometimes the only thing you can do in order to stop the hurt is burn it all down. You can’t help but feel the heartbreak that got Alexina to this place...

Watch: Forget - Theo Bard

Sometimes a song hits you in the stomach and leaves you with this queasy feeling. That’s Forget by Theo Bard, and frankly it’s genuinely terrifying. Emotions turned into torture, memories into wounds.

Forget sounds like BlackPlastic favourites Hugh if they were produced by James Blake - deep, emotional and melancholic vocals ride waves of heavy distorted electronic melody. The video creeps and drips and melts and falls apart in much the same way that those of us lost in love or who have lost love do. It’s bruisingly sincere and open, the tortuous moment of insomnia as you are confronted with the betrayal of an ex-love all too real. You can’t hear this and not know how horrendous the experience was.

And yet, Theo has survived. He must have, in order to write and record this song. And these feelings, they still hurt, but they will dull, with time. And the scars? They tell their own story.

I’ll give the final word to Bard himself, who describes what led to such a personal recording:

“Forget is a dark, raw confessional about a traumatic experience. I was still in love with my ex-girlfriend when a big group of our friends were going away on holiday together. I wanted to be part of it. She was going to be there with her new man, but I didn't want to miss out and anyway, there were lots of other people I could hang out with. I could give them a wide berth and it would be fine, right? One night I woke to the unmistakable sound of their voices coming through the wall. I tried to cover my ears, wanting more than anything to 'unhear' the sound, but it was too late. Completely upset and spun out, I left the next morning, returning to London as fast as I could. All I wanted was to forget what I'd heard and what it meant. At the time, I was pushing my music in the direction of a new sound, telling people my new music was 'melancholic electronic' and I realised how perfect the story was for the new vibe. Once I had the concept of the song in my head it came out so easily.”

Premiere: Hush Hush - A.ROSE

A.ROSE are an Amsterdam-based electronic pop group fronted by East-Grinstead’s Anna-Rose Clayton. Taking inspiration from the likes of MØ and Tove-Lo, A.ROSE create music that combines electronic synths, acoustic drums and pop swagger to form something that feels modern whilst incorporating visual and melodic stylistic elements from the 70s and 80s.

Hush Hush follows on from previous singles *ILYF* and *Rising*, and it deals with the compromises that come from commercialism. The song has a wonderfully disorientating feeling of being dream-like whilst having a vocal that has a grounded, earthy delivery. Those electronics float around a vocal that sees Clayton wear her heart on her sleeve, creating a feeling that she is puncturing her own tendency for self-deception.

Focusing full time on your passion can be a complex and confusion proposition, and one I have considered in the past. Whilst spending your time immersed in the things you love is a thrilling prospect, there are negative aspects that can creep in when paying your rent relies on something so integral to your sense of personal identity.

Discussing the song, Anna-Rose says:

“Hush Hush is about determination and the efforts needed for action. We all see rules being broken and lines getting blurred the moment there’s money involved. I wrote this as a reminder for myself. I believe that everyone’s struggling with themselves, so I hope this gives them hope, but at the same time helps them being aware of our flaws.”

Check out the video for Hush Hush below: