Listen: Significant Kind — Piers

Following on from his recent collaboration with Monomotion on the emotive piano-tech-ballad that Another Story, Piers is back with his latest solo effort, Significant Kind.

The red thread that connects these two releases is a level of attention to small details. Where Another Story was all about creating space for the piano at its core, Significant Kind is a more focused on layered percussion and the interplay of texture.

Based around a central melodic riff and a repeated vocal, it is actually the underlying detail that really holds my attention here… Subtle cymbals, the little click tracks that underpin the drums, tiny glitchy details.

Significant Kind marks a departure for Piers, the charting out of a new direction:

“My world is changing fast, and so is the music. In a world where everyone needs to fit to a trend, I just want mine to be worth listening to.”

Piers Thibault was born in Normandy, but moved to Houston in Texas at a young age. The impact of the US is something he still carries with him, unlocking his sense of creativity and awareness of culture. Following a move back to France, Piers felt displaced and alienated, but eventually dove into the world of music and clubbing at a young age:

“I wasn’t interested in doing drugs, and alcohol wasn’t my thing. I was the only one going out to actually listen to the music. It took me a few years to realize that it wasn’t just a phase—it was my passion.”

This sentiment resonates for me, as someone who moved to Sheffield in the UK in my late teens just to get closer to the nightclub and music scene I had become obsessed by. I had little interest in the drugs, and not enough money to pay the drinks prices at nightclubs… Instead, my friends and I would stay up until dawn, just dancing and enjoying the music.

You can also hear Piers’ devotion in his sound — it is precisely why the music has a transcendent quality. It isn’t intended to be in the background, and instead is an immersive experience.

Listen: ANIML — Great Northern

The new release from Great Northern hums along with a simmering fury that teeters on the edge of boiling over. As we reach ANIML’s chorus, Great Northern unleash soaring vocals and increasingly threatening bass in a way that feels utterly thrilling.

Made up of duo Rachel Stolte and Solon Bixler, Great Northern had separately spent time dedicated to music. Solon spent years playing with the likes of 30 Seconds To Mars, Earlimart, and Sea Wolf, and Rachel in the OC music scene, with Cold Water Crane, and Whirlpool. Working together, the pair jumped into Great Northern, before reaching a point in 2015 where they felt the need to pause, reflect and step back.

In taking a break, Stolte and Bixler found and nurtured new parts of themselves, and brought a fresh love and perspective towards making music. Spending a period of time working without a defined plan or timeline in Napa, co-habiting together with an artist friend who painted, Great Northing found themselves reborn, in what Rachel describes as:

”A life-changing experience and some of the best work we’ve created to date, and a fierce departure from anything we have previously created.”

Following the loss of her mother, and off the back of a career surrounded by male voices, the sound began to coalesce around a more feminine energy.

Great Northern describe ANIML as something akin to the sound of a software integration of Siouxsie & the Banshees and Trent Reznor. There is also more than a little of Karen O’s distinctly feminine sound here – the electronic humanity of It’s Blitz!, in particular. The thick synths and gritty distortion here perfectly complement Stolte’s dramatic vocal performance — check it out below:

Listen: This Way — The Landing

Layered neo soul, funk, and psychedelia come together in a tight embrace on the contemplative, reflective stroll that is The Landing’s This Way.

In creating This Way, The Landing was inspired by the energy on Jungle’s track Bonnie Hill. The resulting piece finds its way to its own distinct vibe and atmosphere. There is a lovely richness to The Landing’s sound here, and it invites you to luxuriate in its own moment. The song ends up being a meditative tribute to presence and mindfulness, as the artist describes:

“The lyrics of This Way speak of the inevitability of the present moment, that the Universe always unfolded just so, in just this way, to arrive here, at now. Wow!”

A classically training musician and amateur astronomer, The Landing looks to bring together synth arrangements that would scale to a symphony orchestra, all whilst leveraging a cosmic perspective. As you hear here, the result is lively and human, leveraging a sense of scale to landing something reassuringly earthy and compassionate.

With over 5-million streams online, The Landing has twice been featured by Apple Music as a Top New Artist, and featured on Spotify’s own curated playlists.

Listen: Where Would You Drive? — Nieri

Where Would You Drive reminds me of the tension of Tiga, whose pop was performed against a background of techno, much like Nieri’s here. There is also a drama stylistically consistent to the slow urban crawl of Ariane Grande and The Weeknd’s Love Me Harder, and Ali Love’s (remember him?) similarly titled Love Harder. It’s all clean lines — functional, tight drums, crisp synths and futuristic bass.

It’s the closing third of Where Would You Drive that significantly elevates it for me, however. As Nieri gets to the two-minute mark, he throws himself into the bridge. The vocals take a threatening turn, as the bass comes to the fore and echo and reverb takes over. Nieri sounds like he is shouting here, yet his vocal volume sits consistently at the level of just a whisper.

We get one final spin through the chorus before these sinister whispered shouts take us to Where Would You Drive’s close, amidst a clatter of drums. It’s a thrilling track, which manages to feel significantly more epic than its three-and-a-half-minute duration would seem to afford.

The sense of drama on Where Would You Drive all stems from its emotional core, which centres on a relationship in crisis. Distilling the fear of losing someone, Nieri says describes the inspiration behind the song:

“When an argument turns for the worse, you start questioning everything. When you fight with a partner, it’s easy to get caught up in your own fears, and point of views. The song wants to be a reminder that, at the end of the day, we’re all looking for healing, and that sometimes we can find it in each other.”

The result is a song with strong themes of anxiety and turmoil, yet ultimately resolving in a sense of hope.

Originally hailing from Milan, Nieri now channels a Euro sensibility into a high-energy sound from his base in Los Angeles. Where Would You Drive follows up on last year’s debut EP, Starshine, released in July. His ambition is to inspire and empower a new generation of pop music fans to be their authentic selves. Check out Where Would You Drive below:

Listen: Morning Light — Lüne

Opening with a falsetto vocal layered over ambient sounds, Morning Light starts with a lonely, introspective atmosphere. Textural flourishes create a sound that surrounds you – drums kick, and a pair of guitars unravel, with one pitched towards each channel. And then Lüne drops into the break — a chunky mash of drums and thick, organic feeling bass.

The overall feeling I get from Morning Light is one of picking through debris and flora, whether in moving through the world, on a hike through the wilderness, or through the heart. There is a beautiful clash at the core of the song, between emotive vocals and rich instrumentation, and more brutalist production techniques.

That tension is perhaps deliberate. An attempt to capture the friction that exists within the human experience, between hope and despair, loneliness and comfort. Describing the song, Lüne said:

“I wrote this track when I was feeling lost and down. The world around me was all grey. This track is an appeal, a journey trough finding the lost colors.”

That sense of colour, and the search for hope and beauty, comes through strongly on Morning Light. Check it out below.