Listen: Play It Cool — SEKI

Play It Cool rides an ebullient wave of cool, soft vibes… There’s a glossy 70s sheen to the sound, filtered through Sofia Coppola celluloid, creating an evocative sense of emotional vulnerability.

Citing influences that include Tears For Fears, The 1975, and The Strokes, SEKI’s sound thrums with the fuzzy cool of the latter, but with all melodic guitar picking and earnest emotion of the former… Play It Cool is about feelings of social anxiety and insecurity related to making the first move on a romantic partner — something that SEKI betrays when singing lines like, “She’s really out of my league”.

SEKI himself hails from Thailand, but he developed an appreciation for a variety of sounds, from the Bee Gees to The Psychedelic Furs, when childhood trips enabled him to shop for old cassettes in Bangkok’s clear markets. Perhaps that early exploration explains how Play It Cool has a sense of European sophistication too — the propulsive drums and tight rhythms feeling crisp-and-modern, akin to acts like Phoenix, whilst still evoking the 80s.

In an effort to promote the release of Play It Cool, and encourage people back out to explore the Bangkok music scene, SEKI has partnered with five music venues in the city to hide hundreds of copies of QR codes. The first person to find each of five unique codes will win a Fender Monterrey speaker and a Spotify Premium subscription, with an additional five Spotify subscriptions up for grabs for five runners-up. To get started, follow SEKI on Twitter.

Check out Play It Cool below:

Watch: Evergreen, Maroon Too — Kakuyon

The new single from San Diego-by-way-of-New Jersey artist and producer Kakuyon, Evergreen, Maroon Too arrives on a cloud of pillow-soft synths, and tight elastic bass lines. Kakuyon’s vocal soars with a timeless quality — melodic, with just a little friction. It feels like a Frank Ocean track, only with some hybrid of Sting and Freddie Mercury on vocals.

In short, Evergreen, Maroon Too is a psychedelic, dreamy slice of alt-R&B-pop. It starts solid, and gets even better. Fuzzy guitar embellishes things with an organic, Miguel-like sense of west coast soul, and at the one-minute-thirty mark, we get crisp snares, rimshots and reverb, giving the sensation of something thick-and-heavy suddenly lifting off the ground and ascending into orbit.

The audible experimentation here on Evergreen, Maroon Too feels appropriate for a song that is all about ambiguity. The song is about finding difficulty in reading someone’s true colours, but is also a deliberate nod to the musician’s red-green colourblindness… And the music itself is difficult to pin-down and define.

Listen: Play With Silver — L E M F R E C K

Play With Silver rolls with an analogue low-end rawness right from its opening bars. Welsh artist, producer, and writer LEMFRECK has hit upon a sound that sits at the intersection of grime, soul, and R&B. LEMFRECK’s pleading vocals yearning, sensual and needy all at the same time.

LEMFRECK cites diverse influences — Kane and D Double E, but also Stevie Wonder and Prince… If the former two are audible in the production style, it is in his melody and experimentation that LEMFRECK draws on Wonder and Prince. Growing up, his craft was honed working for gospel artists, learning that hard graft was the only way to escape one of the more economically challenged areas of the country.

Check out Play With Silver below:

Watch: Don’t Jump The Gun — Sfven

This one gives me goosebumps.

Don’t Jump The Gun starts with a propulsive rhythm and Sfven’s browbeaten vocals. “Patience: you always said I should be patient”, the Derby musician sings, before quickly embracing his own fallibility.

As a sufferer of anxiety and insecurity, there is something about Don’t Jump The Gun that resonates for me. I have experienced a feeling on multiple occasions where my expectations, or reading into a situation, positive or negative, can sometimes be many magnitudes greater than another person’s. Here Sfven wrestles with instinctively wanting more, and yet trying to be at peace in-the-moment, taking pleasure in that “part of the magic”, as he sings here.

If the verse is the internal strife, then the chorus is the exhilarating rush in the moments where you just manage to be present. This is the kind of soaring emotive moment that feels like it has no right being jammed in the middle of a sub-three-minute indie pop song like Don’t Jump The Gun, and yet I just love it. Sfven has created a record that gets me and, for just a moment, it feels like everything is okay.

Having spent much of his time in Leeds, collaborating with friends from college, Sfven signed to 3 Beat Records before starting work on his debut album in the Scottish Highlands last year. A low-fi approach led to the release of Forest Avenue, an album that evoked the soft acoustics of early Bon Iver. Now Sfven is back, and Don’t Jump The Gun is the first of ten new singles. If the rest of those singles are anywhere near as wonderful as Don’t Jump The Gun, I truly can’t wait... Patience be damned.

Premiere: Good Luck Charm — Ray Rhemey

Good Luck Charm is the debut single from new female and best friend duo Ray Rhemey. Pronounced Ray Ra-may, the pair channel a joyful and energetic 90s-influenced blend of pop, soul, and R&B funk — something they have playfully labelled Pop&B Funk.

Ray Rhemay’s sound is familiar, and yet it feels fresh — acid-funk melodies and bubbling bass make a warm instrumental backing for fun, infectious vocals. Together, the artists TaRhea and Vilda Ray are looking to create music “untainted by strict structure, only guided by what’s essential to move you physically and emotionally”.

Produced by Jay Cass and Zyodara, Good Luck Charm depicts a form of unrequited love, when someone takes the lessons they learned by receiving your love, only to apply them to someone new. The lyrics themselves, and the subject of the song, could be interpreted as sad. Yet, Good Luck Charm is delivered with a sense of acceptance and determination — the result is both empowering, and uplifting.

Check out Good Luck Charm below: