Listen: Cold And Grey — Tuff Ghost

Cold And Grey is the new release from Californian native musician Tuff Ghost.

Tuff Ghost, real name Lena Brown, is a DJ, producer and vocalist. When not on tour with her band Foxy Panic, Brown spends time making music in her Echo Park studio.

Intended as a meditative listen and a psychedelic journey, Cold And Grey straddles the line between a downbeat slice of blissed out electronic pop and dark introspective experimental electronica. Brown’s vocals are reflective and earthy, but the distorted synths in the song’s bridge and chorus have an otherworldly, alien feel.

As referenced in the song’s lyrics, Cold And Grey is about that liminal state as we wake up, when you are neither fully awake and of this world, nor asleep. Depending on your prior dream state, that experience can manifest in many experiences and feelings, as Brown describes:

“Waking up from my dreams and discovering that I have a physical form can be anywhere from quite startling, to depressing, to a great relief. This song is for anyone who often feels themselves wavering between these different realities.”

Check out Cold And Grey below:

Listen: Laid — SINK

Crystalline and fractured, Laid basks in its own brittle sensitivity. Haunting vocals meld with electronics to create something that sound like a thick soup of FKA Twigs, Flume, and Apparat. The production glitters with detail, embellishing SINK’s vocal to create an emotive sound, and it conveys a depth and scale to the alienation SINK depicts, as the artist describes:

“I wrote this song when I was still in north Italy, when my music didn’t seem to have a purpose for me any more as I was feeling unheard, and I hope this will help others not to feel the same.”

I regularly find myself reflecting on the role time plays in our lives — how all our drama and anxiety stems from time… The finite scope of our experience, the inability to experience anything beyond the slim sliver of time we label the present, the subjectivity of the past, the unknowability of the future. Time is our constant and universal truth, and our overarching constraint. After listening to Laid, I was interested to hear how central time was to the song:

“Laid is about our relationship with time and the way we experience connections, goals, and anxieties. Perhaps time is our most ancient enemy and the social media reshaped it for us. It’s an intrusion, a violation.”

Check out Laid below:

Listen: Change My Mind — Anna Shoemaker

With the kind of stripped-back and vulnerable sound that I find irresistible, Brooklyn-based mucin Anna Shoemaker’s new single Change My Mind glitters with an incandescent earthiness.

Anna’s verse quivers with a human intensity — her vocal enveloped in space, as a guitar is plays gently, the squeal of fingers sliding up-and-down the fretboard almost elevated to the point of being their own instrument. With the chorus, however, Shoemaker’s vocal soars, a previously unexpected gutsiness flooding that space. Guitars take on a more aggressive stance, the folksiness of Change My Mind’s verse suddenly developing a grungy feel.

Anna originally gained attention for No Lie, Bitch Don't Kill My Cocoa Butter Kisses, her cover version mashup of Kendrick Lamar’s Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe, Chance The Rapper’s Cocoa Butter Kisses, Drake’s Girls Love Beyonce & Destiny's Chid's Say My Name. Since then, she has released two EPs, East Side and Everything Is Embarrassing, received support from Refinery29 and Billboard, and been featured by Spotify and Apple Music.

Despite her origin in that creative mashup, Anna Shoemaker has created a song that feels fascinating and surprising, yet free of gimmicks. Change My Mind is the third song to be lifted from her forthcoming debut album, due in 2022, and depicts a growing maturity and emotional intimacy. Describing the song, Anna says,

“It’s about being hopeful while also accepting and welcoming your emotions as they come. Writing this song really changed a lot for me.”

Check out Change My Mind below, and look out for Anna Shoemaker’s debut album next year.

Listen: Whisper — Knife Girl

Having previously released music under the name Olli, Knife Girl is the latest musical creation from Helsinki musician Lili Aslo. Focused on performing songs with distinctive sonic character and organic feelings, her music boasts a sophisticated sound that blends retro inspiration into a modern aesthetic.

Whisper follows on from Knife Girl’s recent release, Oona, which is billed as an EP but at 10 songs and 35-minutes is more of a mini-LP. Regardless, Whisper is somewhat surprisingly a cover of 2019 track that itself takes inspiration from turn of the millennium trance. Where the original basks in its large drum rolls and pitched-up vocals, Aslo has totally shifted the song’s aesthetic to create something still recognisable, but uniquely its own thing.

Describing her version of Whisper, Knife Girl said:

“For the sound of this track, I took inspiration from various disco-funk records from the 1980s. Lyrically, it's a parody of the sexual and objectifying lyrics you would often find in those records.”

There is a strong punk-funk feeling about the resulting song, but underpinned with synths and clattering drums that create a loose, natural feeling in comparison to the original song’s stark, mechanical sound.

Watch: Flower House — Emilia Anastazja

Opening with the insertion of a cassette into a tap deck, it is instantly obvious that Emilia Anastazja’s Flower House is going to embrace heritage and retro aesthetics. And it doesn’t disappoint — it rides a melody that is constructed from a combination of pillowy-soft drums, dreamy vocals and playful synths.

Anastazja claims influences that include Jessie Ware, Mary J Blige and Whitney Houston. I think the sound is actually very close to long-time BlackPlastic favourite and Jessie Ware collaborator Dev Hynes. The overall aesthetic is very close to Hynes’ warm palette — it’s like falling into a warm robe having just had a lovely bath.

Based in London, Polish-Swiss singer, songwriter, and guitarist Anastazja has a somewhat similar sensibility to Hynes… She, too, takes inspiration from a diverse blend of genres, including soul, R&B, Disco and avant-pop. A youth spent surrounded by musicians and jazz, combined with classical training, ensured Emilia ended up committed to music long-term. Having had success and coverage from BBC 1Xtra and 6Music, she has also been featured by The Line Of Best Fit and Dummy.

The song is actually about the impact of gentrification and how that impacts communities, art and our collective memory:

“The lyrics are talking about my reflections and memories of an apartment block that I used to live in with my best friends, which was demolished in front of my eyes. It was a whole community of artists living there, and we always had an open door for everyone and the rent was almost for free. The house was demolished because the state decided to build some more overpriced modern apartments there. This home holds a special place in my memory and is often a place I look back to as the last real place I could call home. I wanted to express both my anger and my fantasy to ‘Burn’ down what now stands in its place.”