Watch: False Aralia — Pink Sky

Pink Sky are husband and wife duo Angelica and Ryan, whose journey into music is framed in grief and re-growth. The pair themselves encapsulate this in the form of a formative observation: “Sometimes life falls apart before it’s put back together”.

Two years into the couple’s marriage, Ryan was stopped in traffic and almost killed by a speeding semi-truck that hit his car. Following years of recovery, helped by Angelica teaching him how to paint, things improved. Sadly, a complicated and devastating pregnancy loss led to further pain… This time Ryan looked to share something with Angelica, gifting her a drum machine, enabling them to reconnect through music.

False Aralia is the result of that reconnection — a self-described “musical dam bursting”, as inspiration came from trading melodies. The song resonates with that connection, an emotional gravity running through the slow, synth-heavy melodies created by the pair. As Angelica sings, “…I lost you, and you were just too sad to stay around any more” it’s not hard to envisage that she is saying things here that may have been hard to articulate directly to Ryan. Those vocals loop, enmeshed within themselves as drums snap and clap.

The song is set to a similarly beautiful animation, created by Julie Seaward, and comes ahead of their fourth album, Total Devotion, which the pair are self-releasing next month. Check out False Aralia below:

Listen: whitefineline8 — Noah Klein

On whitefineline8, synths tick-tock against a clipped beat as Klein’s slurred vocals slip and slide their way into view, and across my mind. With a lackadaisical vocal, slack bass and layers of distortion, whitefineline8 evokes the sound of Mount Kimbie when they have collaborated with King Krule. The result is a song as overwhelming and all consuming as Mount Kimble’s wonderful Blue Train Lines.

In the closing minute, Klein wails “It’s another long night”. It hits in a tone that sounds like the midpoint between celebration and desperation. This is the music to soundtrack the moments where you aren’t quite sure if you are finding yourself, or losing yourself.

Having previously received recognition from Diffus Magazine, Rolling Stone and Musikexpress, the German-American musician is working towards the release of EP whatdidyoudo2me. Inspired by a period in Barcelona, and a dive into the Berlin music scene, the EP is written in the third person, the musician a deliberately unreliable narrator. Born out of a musical retreat, Klein invited producers Bearcubs and Aud Syn to experiment with different approaches to sound production and tape recorders, which gives the EP its distinctive sound.

Check out whitefineline8 below.

Watch: Youth — Amélie G.

Youth is a cover version of the hauntingly beautiful song by British indie folk trio Daughter. That original version is a spellbound song about the scars we inflict upon ourselves as we grow, vocalist Elena Tonra’s delivery dramatic precisely because of how restrained it is. When she sings “Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong,” Tonra does so knowing just how much weight her words carry.

In contrast, French musician Amélie G. provides a darker, more dramatic take. A lesson in acoustic atmospherics, this version of Youth is cold, brittle, and cold… It’s the late night walk through urban sprawl, dejected and alone. The glitchy electronic production and sweeping strings Amélie employs create that foreboding sense of modern loneliness with purpose. Describing the song, Amélie says:

“What I wanted to show with this song and the video, is that feeling of loneliness within a crowd or a group of people, and the difficulty of being heard. When you are with people and somehow feel invisible, inexistent.”

The sense of being on your own despite being in a crowd can be one of the most alienating sensations. There have been times when I have been in the presence of people I know, trust and love, yet still felt like I am not really there… Not really understood.

Amélie’s response to her feelings is to swallow the words of Youth like bitter little pills. They feel less like the observations of someone wryly describing their brutal emotions than in the throes of them. The track throbs with a raw energy, squeaky electronics grinding away behind clattering drums.

And it is drums where Amélie started, playing them at age six, learning jazz. But she subsequently found her passion and joined a metal band at 14. Having gone on to graduate with a degree in psychology, Amélie’s path was changed when she won a European competition for a scholarship to study at the music school of BIMM in London. She both fell in love with the city, and elevated her musical output to the professional level.

Following Amélie’s debut single last year, Cut Me Deeper, she donated Youth to the musical part of charitable organisation A Left To Stand On (ALTSO), which raises funds to provide critical and life-changing mobility treatments to children in developing countries.

Check out the Soundcloud below, and then a different take in the form of the song’s video, which include’s Amélie playing a live drum solo.

Listen: Losing Focus — Dance Yourself Clean

Losing Focus arrives amidst the kind of all encompassing, thick sound that evokes big rooms, smoke machines and body music. Warm bass, a polished guitar lick and a female vocal harmonies come together to depict the breathless moment of losing yourself in someone else.

Dance Yourself Clean started in Seattle back in 2013 as an indie dance party, before expanding their scope to become a touring dance party across North America. Eventually, they relocated to Los Angeles and created their own label, Lights & Music Collective, and began producing for other artists. Releasing music and remixes under their own name became the obvious next step.

Check out Losing Focus below, and look out for the gorgeous bridge, where the gravity of the song relents. The vocal floats in space as it calls on us to “Hold me down, no sound… Just hold me, hold me down”, before being grounded in the song’s dependable beat.

Watch: White Rabbit — Courtney Farren

Awash with reverb and a heavy kick drum, Courtney Farren’s White Rabbit punches its way into your brain with plenty of sparkle but limited subtlety. Things can be deceptive, though, because whilst the song’s fuzzy guitars and clipped, lo-fi drums sound like they would be at home in a late 90s teen movie, Farren’s vocal is juxtaposed to great effect.

All the distorted bass and grimy instrumentation creates the perfect backing for Courtney’s Angelique delivery. White Rabbit’s chorus centred around a yearning delivery of the line, “You had me at hello” that is both as nostalgic a line as the sound, and utterly irresistible in performance.

Hailing from the Bay Area, Farren has spent much of her life on the road, playing shows as she travelled locations that include New York, Paris, Dublin and, most recent, Los Angeles. This latest base comes following a period spend in a remote village in Croatia, where she focused on refining her production and songwriting skills. She is now working on a project, set for release in 2022/2023, with production duties shared between Brad Hale, Ethan Schneiderman, and herself.

Designed as to be a fun, energising record, Courtney describes the inspiration behind White Rabbit:

“As an unnatural blonde, I created this song to play with people's expectations of me. It's pop, it's fun, and it's an exploration of a new relationship after getting out of a longterm relationship.”