Listen: Rare - Shima Banana

Shima Banana is a half-Japanese, half-American singer, producer and engineer from Tokyo. Having previous been signed to a major label in Japan as the member of a J-Pop group, Shima ultimately quit to study music and engineering. Since then she has been working music on her own. Rare is taken from her forthcoming debut EP, and she recorded, produced, mixed and mastered it herself.

Rare enters your ears with a energetic and loose bass line, before creating space for a playful vocal and subsequently a clatter of lively synths. This is a song that delivers a real linear, structured feeling for the listener - it has a series of moments and arranges these in series as opposed to layering them together, creating a distinctive experience, almost like walking between three rooms where you have complimentary but distinct music playing. It’s also what I would generally describe as textural - the rhythms have an almost tangible physicality to them, the synths feel solid, and the whole record boasts this sense of space, like you are in the middle of the sound.

Rare feels all too brief, but the experience of listening to it is a little captivating. As it finishes I feel my brain trying to hold onto the feeling, like trying to keep hold of water that is destined to slip through your fingers. There is a break midway through the song that teases you, making you think the song is over before it is... And every time it comes back in at that point it brings me a little joy.

Listen: Faith Over Fear - Rachel K Collier

Faith Over Fear is the latest single from Welsh electronic musician Rachel K Collier, and represents the latest to come in support of her debut LP.

The song itself arrives in a flurry of percussion and vocal samples, Rachel K Collier’s vocal slowly unwinding atop of a deep electronic wall-of-sound. The song works its way towards a notable peak, the chorus fully unshackling those vocals as the instrumentation falls into a full-on progressive house sound.

This is a statement of intent - a whispered form of encouragement to oneself, to keep going... To persevere, to overcome fear. You can feel Collier’s own desire to keep moving, musically Faith Over Fear accelerates with the sense of propulsion of someone who just wants to get there, to not look down. It’s a clatter of drums, an overwhelming bass groove, a delicate human in the middle of it all.

Rachel describes the song, and how she has had to overcome the criticism and the detractors and instead just focus on where she wants to get to:

“Faith Over Fear is a song that I wrote as a message to remind myself never to give in to the doubts, fears and negative thoughts my brain sometimes likes to taunt me with - even when I was writing this song they were loud and proud telling me that what I was writing was terrible - I hope it helps others on a mission or who are going through a creative process to overcome the fears and go kick ass!”

Listen: Lie Down - FYOHNA

FYOHNA’s Lie Down is the kind of sultry pop music that initially feels like a sensual ode to a significant other. As vocalist Katarina Gleicher asks “Who loved you better?”, it feels like a threat, but could just as easily be a rhetorical question... perhaps no-one has the capacity for unconditional love that we hold in ourselves. It’s a view Gliecher puts forward in her experience of the song:

“When I think about the question this song is asking and the answer I get from it, it’s ‘Who loved you better?' I loved me better. No one can hold me like me and no one can love me like me.”

Regardless of who the song is about, the thick, heady production work gives this all a heavy, erotically charged feeling. Distorted bass, powerful drums and overdubbed vocals create the feeling of being swallowed up whole in the music. It’s disorientating, a little like love. It feels emotionally charged and physically dangerous. And that cover art just tips it’s hat at the suggestion that even loving oneself doesn’t have to lack that sense of physical excitement.

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.

<3 on Hypem: https://bit.ly/2N6dbzO Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30am4Ms Apple Music: https://apple.co/2Txoli2 Download: https://bit.ly/2Z2CTHK YouTube: https://bit.ly/306t0tL Lyrics: Long stare Blonde hair Driving through to Venice Oh baby you’re my breeze Flexin’ Exes Tryin’ to make me jealous Oh baby that’s not me Come on’ Cause the ocean could turn over Come on’ And the Russians could take over Come on’ Let’s just float in the moment like Oh baby life’s a dream Oh when the sun is falling to the sea Come on’ It’s all about you and me Keep it together while the deserts freeze Come on’ We’re dancin’ till eternity Warm air You’re there Every minutes endless Oh baby you’re my breeze Sci-fi Skyline Got me feeling reckless Don’t need no reality Come on’ Cause the ocean could turn over Come on’ And the Russians could take over Come on’ Let’s just float in the moment like Oh baby life’s a dream Oh when the sun is falling to the sea Come on’ It’s all about you and me Ah ah ah Ah ah ah Ah ah ah Ah ah ah Sunshine raining down on me I got a little sentimental watching you fall asleep And if today went on and on And on and on and on Oh when the sun is falling to the sea Come on’ It’s all about you and me Keep it together while the deserts freeze Come on’ We’re dancin’ till eternity (Ill Take you down I’ll Take you swimming down to the sea Let’s ride it out I’ll take you somewhere you wanna really be)

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.