Listen: Lost At Sea — Christen Morrell

Lost At Sea is a gentle folky number with the kind of thoughtful production I can’t resist. Guitar creates a textured feeling, buoyant bass gives the whole melody a sense of nautical movement, and atop it all a vocal floats atop the surface, sun-kissed and breathless. It is a kind of musical coherence that resonates for me, with Christen Morrell’s metaphor transcending both lyrics and melody to infuse even the production of her music.

Hailing from Annapolis, Maryland, Christen Morrell is a singer-songwriter and producer with a passion for making music out of electronic elements, smart lyrics, and emotional authenticity. Having released her eponymously titled debut EP in 2018, Morrell studied part-time at Boston, MA’s Berkeley College of Music, whilst living in Valencia, in Spain.

Having worked with other musicians, Morrell became more interested in the technical elements of music making, teaching herself production, so she could control her overall sound. Over time, Christen has established a network of female music producers with whom she can collaborate — something that was borne out of her membership of She Knows Tech, an international women-in-music-production programme and network. Morrell was initially frustrated by how often she found she was the only woman in the studio. Her experience of finding female collaborative partners through She Knows Tech enabled her to build confidence, refine her craft and grow her passion for electronic music performance and production.

Following on from her recent EP, To the Water!, Christen’s new single Lost At Sea is centred on the true story of two sailors getting caught in a storm together, out at sea on a first date. The song is a deliberate metaphor for the experience of falling in love, where it can sometimes feel like you and your loved one are the only people in the world.

Watch: Touch You — Morabeza Tobacco

Hazy vibes and slack bass lay the groundwork for Touch You, the gloriously dreamy track from duo Vanilla and Gustav, who together make up Morabeza Tobacco.

A song that bubbles away with a sense of unrealised desire, Touch You has the soft-focused feel of peak-Blood Orange or Lindstrøm & Christabelle’s Real Life Is No Cool. The feeling the song conveys could be an analogue for the way Morabeza Tobacco approach the act of making music… The act of creation is deliberately inwardly focused, focusing on what feels good for the duo first, and disregarding how the whole comes together until they leave the studio. It’s an approach to music making that is almost sensual in approach, consumed in the moment rather than worrying about how things appear from the outside.

Describing the thought process that guides Morabeza Tobacco, Vanilla says, “I think we’re more of a studio band than a live band for now. We don’t have that in mind, how it’s going to sound live. I think we focus on finding the magic in the studio, and finding a way that our voices suit”. “If we want to make a song a certain way”, says Gustav, “we make it that way. There’s never a question of ‘how will this perform live?’, or ‘how is this compared to the last album?’. It’s just about songs”.

The song and video both hum with an irresistibly sensory immediacy that reminds me of warm places and even warmer emotions.

Taken from their forthcoming album, Shadow Of The Cherry, Touch You is apparently one of the more assertively pop moments on the record. The album generally embraces a soft, subtle feeling to it.

Check out Touch You below, and look out for Shadow Of The Cherry when it is released via Roxy Music / Playground Music this autumn.

Listen: Upside Down — Karaboudjan

Channeling a similar vein of prog-rock-meets-dream-pop as Tame Impala, Karaboudjan is a solo project of Californian multi-instrumentalist Billy Kim.

Having been born in Inglewood to musical parents, Billy was raised in Orange County, watching his parents play music together. As young as 17, he was touring the US, before appearing in Rolling Stone as a result of an opportunity to record an album with Grammy-wining producer Jacquire King. During this period, Kim’s lost his father following his deterioration due to Alzheimer’s. Billy describes how the Karaboudjan project is in tribute to him:

“The name had always fascinated me — it was the name of a ship in The Adventures of Tin Tin. I remember begging my parents to take me to the library, so I could check out the next book in the series with which I was so infatuated. For me, Karaboudjan reminds me of the purity of my youth, and its enormous curiosity of life unlived”

Kim subsequently joined the musician Tycho’s touring band in 2016, relocating to New Jersey and writing his debut solo EP as Karaboudjan, Imago.

New single Upside Down pulls together a slightly melancholic melody with reflective lyrics to create a song full of broad, emotive chords and thick, analogue-feeling instrumentation. The relationship between lyrics and melody is something that Kim has found himself captured by. I, too, am often drawn to this aesthetic — the sad songs that inspire you to dance through your problems, for example. Describing the song, Billy says:

“I’ve always been attracted to songs where the music contrasts the lyrics. Like a song that makes you want to dance, but with somber lyrics. That’s what makes Hey Ya!, from Outkast, so compelling for me. But in my case, there wasn’t previous foresight in writing ‘Upside Down’ that way. I tend to write vocal melodies around the instruments, and not so much the other way around. Usually, I approach all creative writing free of rigid outlines or concepts. It’s hard to explain, but really a simple idea to create like a child, free of any criticism and without any boundaries.”

Check out Upside Down below:

Listen: Van Gogh — Pr0files

Other than a brief, sadly one-off, cover of Tears For Fears’ Everybody Wants To Rule The World, LA pair Pr0files haven’t graced BlackPlastic.co.uk since their debut album, Jurassic Technologie, was released in 2016. Indeed, it has been some time since the pair last really worked together:

“After a long break from collaborating (almost five years), we finally decided to exchange song ideas that we had been working on. We were inspired by how much our lives had changed since we last made music together, and these lyrics and emotion reflect that feeling; looking back at a past life.”

The result is Van Gogh, a song that very much picks up where Pr0files left off, despite the extended interlude. Emotive lyrics belted out atop cinematic synths, the chorus’ layered effects creating a feeling of infectious determinism. It is, nonetheless, a restrained returned… Less overtly pop than their power-ballad-meets-Drive song Forgive, which made my top 20 favourite songs of the year on release back in 2014. The overall sound is more sophisticated as a result, and I’m excited to hear where Pr0files go from here.

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: