It seems wrong to refer to London-based DJ / producer DJ Zinc‘s 2018 release, Crack House E.P., as an EP when it’s ten tracks in length. He’s the DJ, however, so who am I to argue with him? It’s ten tracks of bouncing house, jungle, and drum and bass that’s great for any house party or club – even if they are just in your backyard or apartment and consist of no one but you and your pets.
“Blunt Edge” gets the party started with its killer electro-beats and even wickeder synth-bass. “Pimp My Ride” adds Afro-beat dance rhythms and you’re already starting to sweat on the dance floor. “Jekyll and Hyde” is classic strut-your-stuff house with a bass groove that gets stuck in your head all night. “Number 1 Girls” is a straight-up dancehall track featuring vocals from Benga and Sweetie Irie.
“Watch Dis” blends that dancehall vibe into a wild jungle track that will have you jumping around your living room. “Nu Sound” continues the dancehall-laced beats and drops a sick bass line on you that sounds like DJ Zinc has transformed into some sort of rattlesnake working the decks with his tail.
“Horrible” isn’t horrible. It blends retro-rave sounds with vintage video game blasts and beats chopped up by a master chef. “Because” is aptly named as Zinc loops a woman saying just that throughout the track as synths and bass swirl around her voice and then drop out into a killer cut for any dark club any night of the week. Why? Because.
“No one can complete with our killa sound,” No_Lay sings on “Killa Sound.” It’s hard to argue with her, because she and Zinc make a killer team on this hot dancehall track. The closer, “128 Trek,” is one of Zinc’s biggest hits and the first song I ever heard by him. It made me immediately want to track down more of his work, and will do the same to you. The way Zinc drops and loops beats throughout it is immediately ear-catching. You’ll want it on every workout playlist you have.
Actually, you could just make all of Crack House E.P. a workout playlist. You can’t go wrong there. It works as a house project, cooking, or hot sex playlist as well. Get it while it’s (still, two years later) hot.
Keep your mind open.
[Trek on over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
Terra Lopez, AKA Rituals of Mine, is, if nothing else, a trooper. Her newest album, Hype Nostalgia, began (at least emotionally and conceptually) a couple years ago when she was processing the highs and lows of a three-year period of depression resulting from her father committing suicide as she was starting a world tour and a friend dying in the same week Lopez signed to a major label. Highs and lows. She began therapy in 2018, just in time for her bandmate to leave ROM, but she pressed on with the record, using it as not only her own audio medication, but also in hopes of helping others dealing with similar highs and lows.
Opening track “Tether” opens with the haunting lyrics, “You used to love, you used to laugh at my mistakes.” as Lopez loops choppy beats, bullfrog bass, and just the right amount of echo on her vocals to bounce her lyrics around in your head and cause you to think, “Yeah, I’ve been there.”
“Come Around Me” was the first single from the album, and it’s an out-and-proud track about being an openly gay woman of color in a male-dominated industry. She doesn’t want “none of this fake shit” and tells guys in the music biz that all she needs from them is to get “back to the basics” of just being a compassionate / cool human being. “Exceptions” has Lopez singing about her former bandmate’s departure. “You’re not the only one who has these thoughts,” she sings over sultry slow jam beats and synths.
“Heights” has Lopez putting down vocals that are almost raps, and those trip hop beats behind her are top-notch. Speaking of trip hop, “Trauma” is so deep, trippy, and smoky that Tricky is probably kicking himself for not writing it. The follow-up, “Free Throw,” has Lopez telling us “I stay in my lane,” meaning she’s no longer interested in being involved in other peoples’ circuses. “Reflex” is downright sexy as Lopez sings, “All I want is you.” to a special lady somewhere.
“My family history is only a mystery,” Lopez sings on “65th St” – a song that appears to reference her parents and her deceased friend. “All I ever wondered is if you are the source of my emptiness,” she sings on the deeply introspective (but no less beat-heavy) track. I’m not sure if she’s singing to a family member, a former lover, a friend, or herself in a mirror. It works anyway you slice it. Lopez laments her lover being miles away and “fucking with my mind” as she wonders, “Who you thinking of?” on “Omen.” Her electronic beats and bedroom bass are so good by this point in the record that the feel effortless.
“222” is spacey bliss that floats into “Hope U Feel” with Lopez singing, “I’m exhausted…” and “What am I supposed to do without love?” Yet, the song has an uplifting undertone that leaves you feeling like she (and all of us) can move forward if we allow ourselves to do it. The album ends with the short and lovely “The Last Wave.” Lopez puts down simple piano chords as she sings, “I tell myself I’ll find a way out of this.” and how she tried to break through her father’s depression but was unsuccessful. “I can never breach the divide, but I tried, and I still think of you sometimes.”
That’s all most of us can do at times, but that’s okay. Lopez has learned to move forward, as all life must, can, and will do. She encourages us to do the same.
In 1971, the Shell Oil Company sponsored Venezuelan poet and musician Chelique Sarabia to compose an album of traditional folk music updated for modern times. This album would be given as Christmas gifts to Shell employees, friends, and customers in 1973. Sarabia enlisted local musicians to play a host of traditional instruments so he could filter those tracks through synthesizers, sequencers, tape loops, and who knows what else. The result, Revolución Electronica en Música Venezolana, was an amazing South American synth-wave album that’s still ahead of its time.
Opening track “El Pajarillo” blends funk bass with traditional guitar arrangements warped by reverb, pan, and filter controls into a trippy, exotic vacation. “Maracaibo en la Noche” blends distant female vocals and birdsongs with the psychedelic guitar. “Polo Margariteño” has what sounds like a lovely clarinet piece throughout it, and the effects are taken off the guitar to let the traditional dance rhythms come to the forefront. “Cantos de Mi Tierra” has a bit of a spooky feel to it at first, which I love, and then it curves into a beautiful dream space.
“El Cumaco de San Juan” shimmers with an underlying brightness that eventually fades as the guitars come forward as snappy as Rice Krispies. “El Diablo Suelto” is as subtle and witty as Old Scratch himself. “Polo Coriano” sounds like it’s going to be a bold piano-led track at first, but then makes a left turn and becomes a toe-tapping track that brings a smile to your face.
The opening chants of “Mare-Mare por Comer Zopoara el Pájaro Guarandol” weave in and out of the track but rarely overtake the beautiful accordion, organ, and traditional guitar flourishes. “Somobra en los Médanos” reminds me a bit of Italian romantic comedy scores from the 1960’s, and Sarabia puts the filter effects to good use again on the guitar solos.
“Barlovento” gets off to a mind-warp start and continues spinning down a rabbit hole into a Venezuelan wonderland of guitar solos, traditional hand percussion, and echoing vocal sounds. “Rio Manzanares” brings in a hot saxophone riff now and then to mix with the traditional guitar strumming, producing a great effect. Not to be outdone, the closing track, “La Bella del Tamuangue,” adds a trumpet that drifts back and forth from leading with skillful zigging and zagging to hanging out in the back with long, soft tones to add more psychedelia.
It’s a sharp record that will make you want to bug out to South American for at least a few weeks, and, again, so far ahead of its time that it sounds like it could’ve been released last week instead of almost fifty years ago.
Matthew Cardinal today announces his debut solo album, Asterisms – a dazzling collection of ambient electronic music that crystallizes moments in the amiskwaciy (Edmonton) based musician’s life. Known for his work in nêhiyawak – the moccasingaze trio whose debut album nipiy is currently nominated on the 2020 Polaris Music Prize Shortlist, and was nominated for the JUNO Awards Indigenous Album of the Year – Cardinal’s first solo full-length is an audio journal that explores “captured moments of experimentation and expression” in eleven entries: “asterisms drawing attention to where I was musically, mentally and emotionally at very brief passages of my life,” says Cardinal.
Illuminated by the first single “May 24th” and its accompanying video by multimedia visual artist SCKUSE (Stephanie Kuse) shared today, Asterisms explores emotional-sonic textures with an often gentle, dreamy tint – the glint of synthesizers dancing around atmospheric melodies and rhythmic accents.
WATCH: Matthew Cardinal’s video for “May 24th” on YouTube
Inspired by Cardinal’s ephemeral night-time flash photography, Kuse set out to create “something soft, hypnotic, and pretty to suit the music that also reflected the dreamy and nostalgic nature of his photos,” she recounts. “I spent a few evenings out collecting footage near the South Saskatchewan River until I stumbled on the right material – wildflowers and grass going in and out of focus as the camera trailed behind. The footage was then processed through an old TV to enhance the vibrancy and to add subtle distortion.”
“‘May 24th’ is the result of experimenting with generative synthesis and syncing external equipment, playing around and having multiple sound sources playing the same melody. I slowed everything down significantly and built on top of that,” reveals Cardinal, a consummate sound-shaper both solo and in his role in the nêhiyawak trio. Coupled with its successor track, “May 25th” – a brief retro-futuristic motif – “May 24th” features alternatingly ascendant and cascading celestial strands, buoyed by dramatic swells of synthesizers that emit a spacious sigh at the song’s gentle end.
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Created with analogue synthesizers, a small modular system, samplers, electric piano, and processed voice, each sonic entry came out naturally in improvisational waves, recorded often in single days if not single takes. The minimal instrumental framework, usually set up on the floor of Cardinal’s bedroom for maximum communion, created pathways through each machine to the album’s vast cloud of starry narratives. “I’m very influenced by the instruments I play,” says Cardinal. “I love the sound of reverb, the imperfect reflection of sounds and how it decays. The sounds of bells, chimes, electric piano, and cello. I find certain sounds very inspiring.”
Calling to mind the luxurious minimalism of Brian Eno, Erik Satie, Steve Reich, and Glenn Gould, and the swirling influence of Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke, Boards of Canada, and Slowdive, Cardinal creates a glacial, airy sonic universe that is personal yet evocative, subtle yet impressive. The album opening “Dec 31st” glistens with the crystalline climate synonymous with the day, while the album closing “Jul 23rd” ranges into Postal Service territory at the height of summer with a pulsing bpm that punctuates the amorphous map of moods that makes up the record.
Described by Cardinal as “music recorded mostly for myself,” the cathartic value of these instrumental compositions is found in their release. A collection of intimate contemplations becomes interpretive and intentional music, a catalyst and companion to reading, studying, working, walking, dancing, hand-holding, and sleeping. “I would like it if people listened and interpreted the music anyway they want to,” says Cardinal. “I don’t think these songs need a narrative, and I think certain moods come through some of the tracks, while other moods might only be heard by individual listeners.”
Cardinal found the title Asterisms to be the perfect encapsulation of the record he made. In typography, a near-obsolete character used to draw attention to a passage, and in astronomy, a visually obvious pattern of stars, asterisms connects the tangible and the intangible aspects that define this music. On his solo debut, Cardinal creates a document of his inner reflections that flourishes into an offering of sonic refractions for our own contemplation during these thought-provoking times.
Asterisms is out on October 27th via Arts and Crafts. You can pre-order it here.
Blending Los Angeles jazz and funk with Detroit and Chicago jazz and funk with hip hop from both the west and north coasts, Brijean (Brijean Murphy – percussion and vocals, Doug Stuart – beats, synths) make moody dance music, trip hoppy meditations, and shiny summer grooves on their debut album Walkie Talkie.
Murphy’s opening percussion on “Like You Do” mixes so well with Stuart’s electro-grooves that it’s sometimes to tell where one ends and the other begins. “Fundi” seems to mix in conversations you’d overhear on a subway while Murphy sings about taking your time and lying low over Stuart’s space disco beats.
“Drive Slow” is perfect for such activity, especially when cruising along a beachside road or to or from a chillwave afterparty. The underlying hip hop synths are a great touch in it. “Time moves by so slow,” Murphy sings at the opening of the peppy “Show and Tell.” “Just let your body go, it’s easy.” She and Stuart encourage us to dance and forget our troubles, a crucial skill in this day and age. It’s a lovely track that will take you away to that ideal club in your mind, even if just for a little while.
The title track reminds me of some Thievery Corporation tracks with its electro-lounge grooves and feel-good dance beats. The closer, “Meet Me After Dark,” promises a cool afterparty for all of us somewhere in the future, which is actually the present, so celebrate now with Brijean’s sweet grooves, sexy bass, and toe-tapping beats.
Walkie Talkie is lovely. It’s a much-needed dose of sonic bliss in times of self-isolation and changing seasons. Don’t skip this one.
Keep your mind open.
[Walk on over to the subscription box before you go.]
Colombian musician Ela Minus announces her debut album, acts of rebellion, out October 23rd on Domino. Performed, produced and recorded entirely by herself, acts of rebellion is a complex manifesto on simplicity, a call to fight, to live, to be present. It’s a collection about the personal as political and embracing the beauty of tiny acts of revolution in our everyday lives. This ethos is clear in the dreamy, pulsing new single/video, “el cielo no es de nadie,” “an ode to little, constant, every day acts of love” sung in Ela’s native Spanish.
Following “they told us it was hard, but they were wrong” and “megapunk,” “el cielo no es de nadie” defies the idea that one grandiose act means more than little ones. The video, co-directed by Ela and Pepi Ginsberg, presents striking images of Ela’s machines as she moves throughout the stage and hallways of a club. It gives a feel of Ela’s visceral, intimate world and urges finding a deeper connection to those around you. “‘el cielo no es de nadie’ is about all the love I see in small, everyday acts. It’s an invitation to appreciate unheroic, but constant and meaningful actions,” says Ela. “The song’s title, ‘el cielo no es de nadie,’ refers to the phrase ‘I’ll give you the sky,’ a common expression used in Spanish when in love. In the song, I defy it: ‘you can’t give me the sky’ / it isn’t yours to give.”
Before forging her path as a solo electronic artist, Ela was a drummer in a teenage hardcore band. She joined the band when she was just 12, performing with them for almost a decade. Ela then moved to the United States to attend Berklee College of Music, where she double-majored in jazz drumming and synthesizer design. This roving background instilled in her a belief that we all have the power to change things, and as she delved deeper into her work with synthesizers, she saw a clear connection between the freedom of the DIY scene she grew up in and club culture. “I deeply identify with club culture, and want to make music to dance to,” she says. “I also want to make songs in the more traditional sense, with melodies, lyrics, and singing. I want to make songs that stay with people through the years.” Using only hardware to perform, write and record, Ela creates complex, technical electronic music that exudes a warm vibrancy, along with a darker, almost celebratory understanding that our breaths aren’t infinite. Her sharp, coiled words are cathartic—due in part to her approach to writing them. “I always start writing by improvising alone,” she says. “Once I have some instrumentals I’m happy with, I intuitively grab the mic and sing a phrase with a melody in it. I always keep that initial phrase.”
On acts of rebellion, you sense the stories hidden in everyday things. You feel Ela’s personality and viewpoint; you sense her presence. The cover features a photo of her, most of her face obscured, but her eyes sharply focused. On acts of rebellion, she’s asking us to make contact not just with her, but also the people that inhabit our lives. She’s suggesting we leave our gadgets behind in favor of flesh-and-blood communities. She’s asking us to think, dance, and love, while she coaxes humanity from her hardware—machines that rattle and whirr alongside her and, in turn, make us feel more alive.
Ela is sharing DIY printable posters and projection art for fans to use and share as a means of embracing these tiny acts of revolution in our everyday lives. Please visit the participate section of elaminus.com to download the art. Pre-order acts of rebellion
acts of rebellion Tracklist 1.N19 5NF 2. they told us it was hard, but they were wrong. 3. el cielo no es de nadie 4. megapunk 5. pocket piano 6. dominique 7. let them have the internet 8. tony 9. do whatever you want, all the time. 10. Close (ft. Helado Negro)
Ela Minus Tour Dates: Thu. Feb. 18 – Zurich, CH @ Bogen F Fri. Feb. 19 – Paris, FR @ Boule Noire Sat. Feb. 20 – Brussels, BE @ Rotonde Sun. Feb. 21 – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg Tue. Feb. 23 – Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA Ideal Bar Wed. Feb. 24 – Hamburg, DE @ Turmzimmer Thu. Feb. 25 – Berlin, DE @ Silent Green Sat. Feb. 27 – Vienna, AT @ B72 Sun. Feb. 28 – Munich, DE @ Strom Tue. March 2 – London, UK @ Electrowerkz Wed. March 3 – Madrid, ES @ El Sol
Ziemba — project of songwriter René Kladzyk — releases a new single/video, “Harbor Me, from her forthcoming album, True Romantic, out September 25th on Sister Polygon. Following lead singles “True Romantic” and “If I’m Being Honest,” synth-heavy “Harbor Me” was written and demoed while docked on the S.S. Vallejo, a haunted ferry in Sausalito, CA. where, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and Allen Ginsberg used to host their “Houseboat Summit.” The accompanying single-take video was filmed in downtown El Paso, just a few blocks from the Mexican border. It features Kladzyk and dancer Pablo Delgadillo-Espinoza, dancing throughout the night in empty streets.
“Vocals and nearly all synths were recorded on the boat, that first day that I wrote it,” says Kladzyk. “This song took me by surprise, it has an energy to it that I don’t entirely understand, and it doesn’t fully feel like it came from me. I guess that’s why I feel tempted to credit the boat itself as a co-author. I wanted the music video to have that same immediacy and visceral presence that the song has. It was exciting and fun and a little scary at times, dancing through the streets at night. We rehearsed over the course of two evenings until we got it right. I think ‘exciting, fun, a little scary’ is how I’d hope this song would be described, or at least is how I perceive it, so the video is fitting.”
Following 2019’s ARDIS, a multisensory science fiction adventure, True Romantic is a radical shift in that it’s only one thing: a record. For True Romantic, Kladzyk’s vocal-and-piano driven songs were brought to life in the studio, her first time credited as a producer on every track. She worked with two different groups—one in NYC and one in DC—who hail from vastly different corners of the music world: co-producer Don Godwin (Too Free, Gauche, Clear Channel), and contributors including guitarist Mike Haldeman (Moses Sumney, Altopalo) and saxophonist Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers, Thee Reps, Modern Nature), producer/synthesist Kiri Stensby (Eartheater), and many others.
“I made this record because it felt good on a gut level,” Kladzyk explains. But it is no less ambitious than her previous work, it’s just that here, her intricate conceptual project seems to be processing the surreal experience of realizing you’re a person with feelings that you cannot ignore any longer. In a way, it also serves as a sort of meta commentary on the ways pop love propaganda has seeped its way into her subconscious ideas about romance and relationships, told through her own surreal study of the bombastic power ballad. True Romantic finds her channeling her childhood love of Celine Dion, referencing the 1998 romantic fairy tale drama Ever After, and singing lines pulled straight from her diary. In her own words, it’s about “sitting with really embarrassing feelings, and then giving myself a pep talk that it’s okay to do that.” WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “TRUE ROMANTIC”
On September 4th Hannah Georgas who, over the years has been an active touring member of The National and Kathleen Edward’s backing band, will release her new LP All That Emotion on Brasslandand Arts & Crafts. Produced by Aaron Dessner, founding member of The National and producer of Taylor Swift’s latest LP folklore, the album has already attracted an enthusiastic critical response with the mesmeric lead single “Dreams,” the calmly enveloping “Just A Phase” and pre-announce singles “That Emotion” and “Same Mistakes,” earning praise from outlets like FADER, Stereogum, The Guardian, Uproxx, The Line of Best Fit, Clash, American Songwriter, BrooklynVegan, Exclaim, Earmilk, World Cafe and Consequence of Sound who dubbed Georgas “a new generation’s Feist.”LISTEN: to Hannah Georgas’ All That Emotion LP Private Stream [download available on request]
Today, Georgas is sharing her final single from the LP, a slow-burning synth pop gem entitled “Easy.” Introduced by pulsing arpeggiators and a subtle blend of electronic drums and organic percussion, the track builds towards a glittering crescendo, with Georgas’ weaving in and out of harmonized vocal parts as she chronicles a search for closure at the end of a relationship.
WATCH: Hannah Georgas’ “Easy” lyric video on YouTube
“I was going through a break up around the time that I wrote this song and I felt like I kept searching for some sort of closure or definitive ending to the relationship,” says Georgas. “I found myself feeling frustrated that I couldn’t communicate well with this person and whenever I tried to reach out I was left feeling more alone in the end. I was going through this hard time and it felt like they found it easy to let it go.”
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Hannah Georgas began creating the album All That Emotion about a year after the release of her celebrated 2016 album For Evelyn —starting with an intensive process of writing and demoing songs in her Toronto apartment, and finishing with a month long retreat in Los Angeles. She began the record making process in the middle of 2018 when she traveled to Long Pond, the upstate New York studio & home of producer Aaron Dessner of The National.
“Before each session, I would make the long drive from Toronto to Hudson Valley in Upstate New York.” Says Hannah. “It was really special getting the opportunity to work in such a remote space with Aaron and Jon and I was always itching to get back whenever we had breaks. At the same time, I appreciated the space in between and coming back with fresh ears.” Hannah continues, “Aaron and I agreed the production needed to bring out the truth in my voice. During these sessions we musically found a new depth and, vocally, a delivery that was more raw and expressive, allowing the emotional texture of each song to shine through.”
The writing of the album found Hannah creating her most personal album to date. “All That Emotion’s album cover is an old family photo,” says Hannah. “I love the image because it captures this calm confidence. It looks like people are watching a performance and it seems like he’s diving in without a second thought. Similarly, I find that it parallels the approach needed within art. The calm confidence of expressing yourself without the thought of consequence, regardless of anyone watching.”
On the album, you’ll hear about bad habits and prayerful families—right and wrong love—mistakes and moving on—casual cruelty and most of all, change. Plotting the boundaries of where to place this music it’s emotionally fraught but warm & fuzzy. “An indie-minded avant-pop artist” was the Boston Globe’s formulation for her charms. Think of Fleetwood Mac meets The National; Kate Bush-sized passion with the earthiness of Cat Power or Aimee Mann. The album grows inside you and sticks to your insides. The songs are big tent anthems, rough at the edges but relatable.
Hannah continues: “I still have long conversations with my friends over the phone, talking about love and relationships, pain and heartbreak, our upbringings and the hardships that come along with that.” In an era of social media quips and hollow memes, maybe it’s this kind of one-on-one contact a form of communication worth getting back to?
“In this way, I get a lot of lyrical inspiration through the individuals I interact with in my everyday life,” she says. “Then music becomes the forum where I work out these feelings, embrace and express pain and love, joy and anger, frustration and fear and hope. It’s where I can be uncensored, not hold back, and say what I want to say. In that way, making music is a cathartic and cleansing process. It’s always the best feeling when someone tells me my music has helped them out in some way. That keeps me going.”
All That Emotion will be released September 4, 2020 on Arts & Crafts/Brassland. It is available for preorder here.
Keep your mind open.
[Ease on over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
It takes guts to open your new album with a Radiohead cover, but that’s exactly what Kelly Lee Owens does on her (no shocker, if you’d heard her amazing self-titled debut – which was my top album of 2017) excellent new record, Innner Song. Owens has stated in press releases that Inner Song follows “the hardest three years of my life,” and one could view the record (and her) as a phoenix rising from ashes.
That aforementioned Radiohead cover is “Arpeggi” (from 2007’s In Rainbows) and she starts it with subtle, humming bass that’s almost subliminal. Owens sings about letting go of things in the past that cannot be fixed on “On” – which has her voice moving and sounding like birds released from a cage. It builds into a thumping, bumping floor-filler. Owens excels at tracks like this that take you on a journey from peaceful meditations to booty-shaking workouts.
“Melt!” – a song about global warming that samples collapsing glaciers and people ice skating – deserves to be on every DJ’s hot list of dance tracks this year. “Free yourself with the truth that’s already in you,” Owens sings on the haunting “Re-Wild.” It’s advice all of us can use, and Owens’ use of echoing synths helps it sink in like acupuncture needle. “Jeanette” is all bouncy synths and beats that make you want to dance and then hug everyone and then dance some more.
“L.I.N.E.” (“Love Is Not Enough”) has Owens realizing that “love is not enough to stay…love is not enough alone” as she walks away from a dead-end relationship with someone offended by truth. “Corner of My Sky” features none other than John Cale on vocals singing and speaking poetry over Owens’ lush synths. “Night” blends house, ambient, and chill wave, and “Flow” is perfectly named as it bumps, grooves, sways, and, yes, flows along like a happy balloon bouncing down the street on a summer wind. The album ends with sort of a reverse lullaby on “Wake-Up.” The soft song is great for relaxation, but Owens tells us (and herself) to open our eyes and move forward (the only direction we can move in this life, really).
That fact that Owens could create an album as lovely as Inner Song after “the hardest three years of my life” is a testament to her fortitude. I’m glad she made it through the trials and came out, like a phoenix, stronger.
Rituals of Mine – the immersive, hybrid R&B electronic project of Los Angeles-based songwriter Terra Lopez – shares the new single/video, “Exceptions,” from her forthcoming album, HYPE NOSTALGIA, out September 25th on Carpark Records. It follows previous singles “Free Throw (feat. KRIS)” and “Come Around Me.” For the bedroom pop-tinged “Exceptions,” Lopez wrote with a TC Helicon vocal effects pedal to reflect the track’s vulnerable lyrics and make her voice more of an instrument. It deals with the heavy realization that some people aren’t meant to be in each other’s lives forever. The accompanying video, directed by Leo Pfeifer, is based on Lopez’s childhood.
“During this time I had a big falling out with some key people in my life (including my longtime bandmate), friends that had been family for over a decade. I honestly thought I’d grow old with these people by my side and it was a heavy realization coming to terms that we just didn’t belong in each other’s lives anymore,” says Lopez. “It’s a song that acknowledges that in these situations, it’s a two-way street. There’s no need to shift blame on anyone, that won’t undo what happened. The chorus, ‘Take all of my pride, throw it out’ is me admitting that I was also part of the reason for the connection ending.”
In addition to her WNBA History Club podcast, Lopez announces HYPE NOSTALGIA TV, a podcast that reflects on nostalgia and how it directly impacts artist’s work. The first episode features Tegan Quin (from Tegan & Sara) and future guests include Chino Moreno (from Deftones), Nico Turner (from Cat Power) and KRIS.
HYPE NOSTALGIA follows 2019’s SLEEPER HOLD EP, which was filled with emotional intensity and self-reflective songwriting, confronting the emotional rollercoaster that came with the death of her father and later, her best friend.
On HYPE NOSTALGIA, Lopez didn’t want to solely focus on the heaviness of her life. Instead, she opted to create an album written from a pre-loss perspective. There are dark moments and devastation throughout, but what largely transpires is Lopez’s ability to reconcile with her emotional trauma by reimagining her past in a way that isn’t shrouded in total darkness, but glimmers of light and hope.
Between St. Augustine, Florida and Los Angeles, Lopez collaborated with producers Wes Jones and Dev the Goon on HYPE NOSTALGIA. The result is a self-assured 13-track album interspersed with future R&B, electronic and pop, and layered with the softness of Lopez’s ethereal vocals. From tackling what it’s like to be a woman of color in the music industry to exploring intergenerational trauma, HYPE NOSTALGIA is an all-encompassing look at Lopez’s personal growth and resilience.
With HYPE NOSTALGIA, Lopez offers a glimpse into her own experience in the hopes that it will open the door for listeners to confront their own mental health challenges and serve as a touchstone as they find their own way to process and heal. Watch “Exceptions” Video: https://found.ee/GlXc
