Listen: Swimming / Drowning — Shima

Having previously impressed with her singles Rare and Machine, half-Japanese, half-American musician Shima is back with another distinctive slice of modern R&B-influenced pop.

Swimming / Drowning is Shima’s most polished song yet, her cool vocal skipping across the polished surface of the song’s production. Synths play out an unfussy, laid back melody before crunchy bass kicks in for a chorus that creates a complex tune from multiple layered vocals. The production here really stands out for the way it feels at once both restrained and sophisticated.

That forward-slash in the title seeks to convey the proximity between swimming and drowning, and how one can actually feel like the other. Focusing on the relationships between success and failure, Shima looks to portray the struggle and energy it takes not just to succeed, but to fail as well. Here is hoping that she gets the success she deserves here.

Check out Swimming / Drowning below:

Stream Swimming / Drowning by SHIMA from desktop or your mobile device

Watch: Back To The Start — KALI

KALI is a 16-year-old singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer. Yes, 16. Having started writing and recording music a few years ago, her blend of indie-rock with an edge of California surf has drawn young audiences to her performances in LA venues, including The Smell and The Viper Room. With Back To The Start, KALI is unveiling her debut release.

KALI’s lo-fi reimagining of indie pop draws on similar inspiration as Clairo and Soccer Mommy, with that kind of flabby looseness Rostam has been so influential in popularising. The windy-beach feel of debut single Back To The Start hints at a distinctive direction for KALI that is her own, however.

What initially drew me in with Back To The Start is the way KALI blends a rawness with deliberate and purposeful polish. Just the opening 30-seconds or so demonstrate a sophistication rarely heard on a debut release. Thick and heavy bass underpinning shimmering guitar work, an overheard voice talking on the phone, and suddenly Back To The Start is off... A granite-like guitar riff throwing caution to the wind, as snares pound the pavement like rapid footsteps slapping the pavement, running both to and from the same thing.

Back To The Start feels like a lovely nightmare — one of those things you know you should escape from, but can’t quite bring yourself to. In describing her writing inspiration, KALI says:

“As I got older, I started to have experiences that were much more emotional and personal, and songwriting became an actual necessity instead of something that was fun for me to do.”

There is a surprising emotional maturity and authenticity to KALI’s sound here that validates that statement. It’s a cliché, but her sound betrays a wiseness beyond her years. With its sophisticated production, beautiful artwork and a great video (co-directed by KALI, Zealand Yancy and Sophia Ziskin), Back To The Start feels set for success. I can’t wait to hear more.

Listen: Till The Love — Ella M

Till The Love is the new single from musician Ella M, and it opens with a lovely laid back sunshine dappled guitar riff and easy shuffling drums.

Having recently left London to live in LA, Ella M’s Till The Love not only depicts that moment in time, but it also sounds like it. Ella’s vocals have an earthy honesty that feels distinctly London, yet that sunny instrumentation is pure California.

The final track to be released from Ella’s Yellow Blazer EP, Till The Love sees the artist describe her final moments in London. Having found someone she was attracted to, her experience was defined by the fact that she intended to stay as long as the relationship retained its sense of fun and romance.

Ultimately, Ella was there, in London and in the relationship, “until the love runs out”. The feelings we have about places are often complex, much like those for people — filled with complexity and feelings that are hard to distill down. Sometimes you can’t bear to be apart, and sometimes it feels like it’s time to move on to something new and exciting and unknown.

𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖆 𝖒. is a singer-songwriter from Reading, England, (now living in LA) who uses her two loves of pop and jazz music to create songs exhibiting love, strong melodies laced with nostalgic audible

Listen: You — Abrahamblue

Abrahamblue is a Belgium-based musician whose desire to escape the everyday trappings of modern urban life in Antwerp led him to turn to music making. Having felt overwhelmed, Abrahamblue says, “Life just felt like a race, city life was overwhelming”. Music became his escape:

“It reminded me how I felt when I quit school at 17 to chase my dreams, with nobody to show me the way, so I had to learn to play all the instruments myself.”

As a person, Abrahamblue is familiar with the experience of being an outsider. Born to Syrian-Palestinian parents, he moved to the city of Antwerp when he was just five. Without access to a TV, his cultural experience was focused on classic Arabic singers, leading him to experience an identity crisis which made him unable to feel the security of home.

In time, music became Abrahamblue’s path out of his uncertainty — James Brown and Michael Jackson exposed him to pop music, and the myriad of genres that converge on it. In time, he discovered Miles Davis, and from there got deeper into jazz, bossanova, hip-hop and soul, before eventually starting to teach himself how to play.

You, Abrahamblue’s latest release, rides on a soft and melodic cloud of gentle melancholy. The vocals convey an easy-going earnestness, the emotional gravity front and centre. At the same time, there is an easiness that dispels any notion of melodrama.

The style of Abrahamblue’s performance on You reminds me of André 3000’s flow — artistically embellishing the music’s emotion without making it feel like a ‘performance’. It suits the jazz-like free form experimentalism on display here — the vocal is part of the music, another instrument to convey feeling, as opposed to being above the music or dominating it. The result feels natural, like slipping on someone else’s coat and deciding it suits you better than your own. Abrahamblue brings me into his emotional truth, one of longing met with slight uncertainty, and suddenly, it feels like mine.

Watch: Nothing Constructive — Kitten Heel

The video for Nothing Constructive’ kicks off with the prerequisite sass deserving of a record that sounds like it has already checked out, the band’s singer walking into a room with his band already playing, as if he is running late for practice. Before he has really found his spot, he has launched into his vocal - this time as if he can’t wait to get it done.

Kitten Heel are a six-piece outfit hailing from the NSW city Wollongong in Australia, led by writer/producer pair Jareth Leslie-Evans and Jourdain Vitiello. The sound of Factory Records and Modular channels through their music, but you can also hear more than a dash of DFA and LCD Soundsystem in the nervous energy on display here.

The tense anxiety Nothing Constructive seethes with is rooted in an everyday reality we all have to deal with, as the described by Kitten Heel:

“Nothing Constructive is essentially about my detachment from Social Media. The sheer volume of false and ill-informed opinion, all championing a self-righteous chest beating — is baffling. For a long time, it snared my ability to do anything else. I’d become angry, it crippled my creativity — which in turn scared me beyond comprehension. So, I deleted all platforms and let blissful ignorance sooth me once more. The clip plays with the dominant and submissive nature of that relationship.”

You can see that dominant and submissive relationship is invoked in the bindings that ensnare the band as they play, gradually crippling their free will.

The attitude stoked vocal gives Nothing Constructive a feeling of lethargic ambivalence, but those brooding synths make it feel like it could tip over into anarchy with a moment’s notice. Nothing Constructive never quite goes there, but I would love an extended version of this — I can imagine the chaotic cacophony of instruments increasingly disjointed from the locked groove like melody they start with. An artistic protest evoking the din we so readily expose ourselves to on social media.