Watch: Lo2Hi — Thals

Thals is a half-Columbian, half-Spanish musician who channels indie and skate culture to make aggressively honest scratchy pop music. Lo2Hi sees that sound land in the form of a weightless shoe-gaze melody, bristling with angsty nervousness and stubborn hopefulness.

That sound makes sense when you reflect on the fact that Lo2Hi is channeling the swinging anxiety that comes as you fall in love… The lows and highs you only experience when you begin to place your happiness in the hands and at the mercy of another person. I love the moment here where the song melts into the bridge, evoking the weightless, listless feeling that falling in love conjures.

Lo2Hi arrives in a flurry, and it feels like the excitement and rush of both a heart stopping conversation with a crush and a jaunt on a skateboard all at once. Check out the video below, which has me really missing London as I near my first anniversary of enforced working from home:

Listen: Be Patient — Loverground

Be Patient starts with a combination of slightly reverb filled percussion, hushed vocals and synth pads. The result is something that feels warm, approachable and cosy. From there the song moves into a gently bumping sound — clipped bass and tight drums giving the track a sense of understated momentum that contrasts with some daydream-esque arpeggiated melodies.

Loverground is the musical project of London-based French-Argentinian musician and producer Kevin Erlicher. Having previously fronted the indie band Smooth Ends, Erlicher has moved towards the sounds of lo-fi house. Following Easy :) and About You, Be Patient is Loverground’s third single. Describing the inspiration behind Be Patient, Erlicher explained:

“I wrote the lyrics as if I was writing a letter to my future self… ‘Break through, feel love from another. Straighten up, be a man, be a lover.’

These lyrics are a series of advice I give to Kevin from the future, as I was quite lost at the time both career-wise and in my personal life. I took some time to work on myself and I now feel that my life is resembling more and more what I envisioned in those lyrics. There is still some work to do but it feels like it is going in the right direction.”

Check out Be Patient below, and look out for Loverground’s five-track EP, set for release later in 2021.

Listen: Everybody Wants To Rule The World — Pr0files

Hands down, one of my favourite acts of the 80s is Tears For Fears. Songs From The Big Chair is one of those albums I just always go back to. A lot of 80s music appeals specifically because of the age and period it exudes. In the case of Tears For Fears, and in particular Big Chair and The Seeds Of Love, the music doesn’t show its age in the same way as most of their contemporaries.

Take a listen to the big chords of The Working Hour, ticking back and forth like a clock before they are embellished by that luxurious saxophone. Or the sparse opening of Woman In Chains, a song that is both full of space and full of detail. These are songs that don’t feel old — instead they evoke a feeling of “they don’t make ‘em like this any more”. These are songs that feel expensive.

But it’s 2021 now. I haven’t featured LA duo Pr0files since their début album, Jurassic Technologie, came out in early 2016. The world has literally changed pretty much in those intervening years, but it feels a little like Lauren Pardini and Danny Sternbaum never went away.

Back with a cover of Tears For Fears’ career-defining Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Pr0files draw on the feelings of luxury that the song evokes. In contrast to the feeling of an ostentatious getaway retreat that the original conveys, the technical and mechanical feeling conveyed through the duo’s use of synths and drums gives this a more urbane aesthetic. It’s less “on a yacht” and more “at a beach bar”. Or at the very least, “on the underground, dreaming of being on a yacht”. But hey, it’s a pandemic — right now being on the underground seems less accessible than a yacht. So maybe the underground IS luxury.

Pr0files: welcome back, what took you so long?

Listen: Rebel — Ormiston

Hailing from Montreal, Ormiston is a singer, songwriter, musician and producer focused on making music that channels disco, indie chillwave and yacht rock. It’s the latter sound that I feel sets Rebel, Ormiston’s debut single apart. There is a frisson at play at the interplay between Rebel’s indie scratchiness and the laid back, sun-baked feel of the bass work.

Having been born into a bilingual family, Ormiston grew up surrounded by female musicians. Having produced a tracks for a number of other musicians, he is now looking to release his own music, working on an album set to be released in spring 2021.

Rebel is an infectious piece full of taught and urgent instrumentation. Together, the layered guitars, bass and drums surround Ormiston’s vocal in a way that feels deliberately opaque - aloof yet dreamlike. It’s the sort of thing I could imagine feeling at home in a Sofia Coppola movie. Check it out below;

Listen: Are You Thinking About Me?? — Sophie Blair

One of the universal truths of being human is the fact that we can only truly know our own experience. An implication of that is that we only really know ourselves from the inside — we can hazard a guess at how others see us, but never fully know. I sometimes find myself trapped in that thought, and as a result pondering how odd it is that I can know another person better than anyone, and yet I still can’t know them the way they know themselves. The fact that we can’t see us through the eyes of others, even those that love us, is one of the magical tragedies of our existence.

Sophie Blair’s new single, entitled Are You Thinking About Me??, buzzes with the nervous urgency that comes from becoming so fixated on someone that they take on an otherworldly quality in your mind. It is the experience of asking, “How can this other person who has left an indelible mark on me possibly feel anything close to that about me?”

When you are madly hooked on someone, the very knowledge that they could be thinking about you is thrilling, and it is that sensation that fuels this song. Blair successfully leans into that feeling with a breathless vocal set against a pulse-quickening backing track that channels Carly Rae-esque pop hooks combined with classical flourishes.

The classical components in Are You Thinking are subtle, but reflect Sophie Blair’s upbringing and introduction to music. Blair grew up as a Mormon in Provo, Utah, a small town with an unusually vibrant music scene. As a violist, she attended a Mormon university planning to major in classical music. Whilst, in time, she left her college and her faith behind, music continued to be a major passion for her.

Experimenting with a loop pedal and her viola, Blair began making pop music, soon getting the opportunity to collaborate with established local musicians before playing festivals and touring, performing with The Killers and Bruce Springsteen among others.

Are You Thinking is the lead single from Sophie Blair’s sophomore EP, Flatline. Describing the song, she says:

“Are You Thinking About Me?? was the culmination of my obsession with pop music after years of classical-music training. I realized how similar the symphonies I'd played were to the top 40 radio hits I was spinning. In both, there was an intricacy that fascinated me. With this song specifically, I was imagining my typical, compulsive, head-over-heels dive into relationship after relationship with a new backdrop -- a beach, champagne, and roses instead of porches, PBRs, and house parties. Articulating that idea: the psychotic, unending rush of a new romantic chase against the soundscape of the articulate hooks I was so in love with felt thrilling.”

Check out Are You Thinking About Me?? Below: