mimi bay - Hanna Barakat - Corniglia

With songs as good as 'Really' it's hardly surprising that mimi bay has already gained considerable attention, her Bedroom Pop is smooth, dreamy and beautifully arranged.

Just four weeks ago we featured Hanna Barakat and the song 'Damage Done'. Swiftly following on from that we have 'Leave Your Light On' a song that really showcases the power and splendour of her vocals, ahead of August's album release entitled 'Siren'.

It's been a while since we last featured Perth, Australia's Corniglia whose music has evolved into a resplendent mixture of shoegaze, psych rock and darker dream pop, with the new song 'A Lost Forgotten Dream' also demonstrating the quality attached to all of that.
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mimi bay - Really.

Hailing from Gothenburg, Sweden, 18-year-old Bedroom Pop artist, Mimi Bergman is set for bigger things. From a young age, the self-taught multi-instrumentalist has been surrounded by music, showcasing it best with her deeply personal songwriting and poetic music. Influenced by many artists, mimi taught herself how to play a variety of instruments and at 14 started to write and self-record her own music in her home recording studio, then sharing it on her YouTube channel Hi I’m Mimi which has grown to near a quarter of a million subs.

With the release of ‘really’, mimi bay explores the feeling of unrequited love, the dreamy heartfelt track is set to bring back memories of a past love that you never seem to get over. mimi will send you into a musical daydream with her sweet soft-pop vocals and emotive guitar playing. To best describe her sound, think beabadobee, Girl In Red and boy pablo. mimi’s debut EP is to be released later this year.

After releasing music on YouTube, the songwriter soon started grabbing attention, gaining a huge amount of support and fans along the way. With over 3 million streams on Spotify, her singles ‘Afraid’, ‘Too Late’ and ‘in your neighbours garden’ – her ever-growing YouTube fanbase has secured her at the forefront of the bedroom-pop.

mimi says that “’really’ is about romanticizing people you see online and spending time thinking of them while they don’t know you exist”

With her keen eye for dreamy aesthetics, mimi bay takes all control of her visual output, creating artwork that fully accompanies her music, assuring a strong and cohesive narrative throughout her work.

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Hanna Barakat - Leave Your Light On.

Austin-based, hard/alternative artist, Hanna Barakat, announces her new single, “Leave Your Light On,” ahead of the upcoming album, Siren, due out August 16, 2019, produced by John Moyer (Disturbed). Born in Texas to an American mother and a Lebanese father, Barakat spent her early years traveling around the world with her family. Barakat pays homage to her roots  on the album.

The album was produced by John Moyer, bassist from famed hard rock band, Disturbed, mixed by Martin Nessi (Michael Jackson estate, Ariana Grande, Josh Groban, Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Ricky Martin, Kelly Clarkson), and mastered by Ted Jansen of Sterling Sound (Disturbed, Evanescence, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Halestorm, Pat Metheny).

Barakat states on "Leave Your Light On:"“Society portrays love like a fairy tale, and if the relationship you’re in is not picture perfect, there’s always someone else out there to sweep you off your feet and ride off into the sunset with. Reality tells us that pairing lives with another soul is one of the hardest things two people can do on this earth. Relationships take constant care, devotion, patience, and a hell of a lot of strength. We all go through periods of depression, weakness, physical or psychological traumas, and we need help. We need people in our lives to lift us up and hold us tight while we recover. Leave Your Light On is an honest plea between two lovers to do just that - be strong for one another in tumultuous times - Be each other’s  light - their pillar of strength - and know that it is an ebb and flow - the roles will most certainly be reversed not long down the road. This is what relationships are built on.”

Barakat beautifully describes the inspiration behind the album: “I chose the title, Siren, for my debut record, after John Moyer and I produced our final song together, which happened to be “Siren.” The power of the music and the lyrics filled me with such fire. It motivated me and inspired me to take this next step in my journey with such confidence. Though the song references the mythical sirens of the sea, I loved the idea of a double meaning: an actual siren, warning call, alarm! The songs on this record were written over a span of 10 years. These songs have been my comfort and my therapy, as I’ve journeyed this world, witnessed injustices, engrossed myself in my ancestral culture, grown within myself, literally travelled the globe, loved, lost, failed, loved again, and struggled to reach the place where I am today.

I want to bring awareness to these situations, not by forcing any political agenda, but by pushing for love, understanding, and acceptance of all the other humans walking this earth together. Throughout history, there have been unnatural walls physically erected, or socially accepted and perpetuated, in order to divide people. I want to tear those walls down. All of them. Through my music, with rock guitars, heavy drums, deep rhythmic bass lines, and my intricate vocal melodic lines and punchy harmony stacks, I have chosen to forge arabic instruments like the oud, kanun, frame drum, riqq, into my sonic landscape, where I feel they so naturally and appropriately belong.”

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Corniglia - A Lost Forgotten Dream.

A Lost Forgotten Dream It's waking in a primordial land. It's waking from a dream. A dream of nature and of man - Conjoined twins long separated - both reunited and at war. It's a rolling psych song. It's dark dream pop. It's the undulating, pulsing flow of surreal lyrics over rolling drums and guitars that drive and release like the rise and fall of the ocean.

“On/Off”: Album Notes - It’s dark melodic shoegaze. Dark dream pop. Whispery, stunted psych. Surreal and introspective. Disconnection. Discontent. Fraying. A derelict Cyborg Earth. But it is technology overreaching, faltering. The Earth reclaiming power. It’s the future mirroring the distant past. It’s Man and Nature reunited and at war.

Time erodes, swallows everything. Monoliths - cultures, cities, ideas… Buildings inevitably crumble. Become irrelevant. In the face of the enormity of time - our own perceived self importance dissolves away - It’s finding a calmness and contentment in this. This microscopic-ness. This irrelevant-ness. These aren’t sombre thoughts though. These are beautiful and freeing. A freedom in anonymity.

Other possible things to take from the title “On/Off”: Living on autopilot in mindless routine like an appliance - with an on/off switch. The Earth reseting itself like an appliance (when it’s not working properly).

The album is a little different to previous stuff. Was definitely more focussed on a theme this time. The obvious difference though, Chloe not singing on the album………unfortunately. That wasn't planned. She was really busy with Uni the last 12 months, so we decided I’d be left on my own for this one. She’ll definitely be back for the next thing though. The album was recorded at my house. My brother Mitch, played most of the Drums. It was mixed and mastered at Bergerk! Studios in Perth.

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Wasuremono - Diamond Thug - Hanna Barakat

We featured the song 'Are You OK?' by Wasuremono two months ago and the new single 'Self-Help' is a much welcome follow up from the band, this time with an anthemic vibe & engaging melodic chorus.

Diamond Thug have a new single called 'Aphotic Waters', following on from 'Tell Me' which we shared just a week ago, as the band continue to build deserved interest in their Gaiafy EP due out this coming week.

Finally we have 'Damage Done' by Hanna Barakat a melodic rocker that gradually builds into a powerful and hook fuelled piece.

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Wasuremono - Self Help.

Wasuremono have released a brand new single entitled 'Self-Help' after 6 Music's Steve Lamacq gave the track it's first spin on his show last week. The track is taken from their recently announced upcoming album 'Are You OK?' that will be released on June 14th via The Wilderness Records. The brainchild of Wasuremono, William Southward, explained the meaning behind the song:

"'Self-Help', was the last song to be written. It’s got a Prince kinda vibe, but with low tuned guitars and gospel influenced backing vocals, with call and response. The running theme is one of optimism and feeling less alone, but there is also a sense of urgency to this song, of reaching out; “All I really wanna say, is I wanna help ya’. Essentially, it’s an uplifting and jubilant song that’s supposed to make you feel good and feel like we are all in it together. The hard panned toms of the Linn give it space to breathe and a slightly tribal feel too in the choruses."

Previous singles, 'Are You OK?' and 'Lonely Type' have been picked up by the likes of 6 Music's Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq, and Radio 1's Huw Stephens, and Dork recently described the release as "...sure to be a riot of synths and fun. A magic combo".

With the enlistment of friends Madelaine Ryan, Isaac Phillips, and Phoebe Phillips, Southward’s songs come to life. Wasuremono will be performing across the UK this summer in support of 'Are You OK?', with stops at festivals including Live at Leeds, The Great Escape, Bluedot, and Dot To Dot, as well as a headline show at the Sebright Arms in London on June 19th.

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Diamond Thug - Aphotic Waters.

Formed in a basement in Kommetjie, a small surf town on the southern tip of Africa, Diamond Thug combine Sub-Saharan rhythms with indie pop dreamscapes, with a vitality and energy bursting from the seams of each track that becomes juxtaposed with melancholic themes.

Lead singer Chantel Van T’s luscious vocals wash over layers of guitar, synth-bass and pounding drums with a certain quiet power. When Chantel was a teenager, she wanted to be a quantum physicist, which may explain some of Diamond Thug’s lyrical subjects.

The band’s debut album Apastron was set within the depths of space, with celestial bodies and laws of planetary motion being used as metaphors for earth-bound problems. New EP Gaiafy turns inward to human experience, pairing nihilism and existential crises with allusions to climate change.

On the new single, the band tells us that “the Aphotic zone is defined as the depths of the oceans,
void of any light. Musically we’re drawing comparisons to Evolution through the cyclical but progressive song-structure. Solace is found through the belief that although we feel distance and unfamiliarity between ourselves, all of our fates are connected.” Gaiafy EP due for release May 24th 2019.

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Hanna Barakat - Damage Done.

Austin-based, hard/alternative artist, Hanna Barakat, announces her new single, “Damage Done,” ahead of the upcoming album, Siren, due out August 16, 2019, produced by John Moyer (Disturbed).

Born in Texas to an American mother and a Lebanese father, Barakat spent her early years traveling around the world with her family. Barakat pays homage to her roots  on the album.

The album was produced by John Moyer, bassist from famed hard rock band, Disturbed, mixed by Martin Nessi (Michael Jackson estate, Ariana Grande, Josh Groban, Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Ricky Martin, Kelly Clarkson), and mastered by Ted Jansen of Sterling Sound (Disturbed, Evanescence, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Halestorm, Pat Metheny).

Barakat states on "Damage Done:" - “Relationships are inherently messy, sometimes riddled with indecisiveness, and most commonly, clouded by sexual passion. Knowing what is right for you in a relationship, long term, is not always clear, leaving you struggling with your own intuition to resist falling back into something familiar or comfortable. ‘Damage Done’ is a song driven by passion – a story between ex-lovers, falling back into old patterns, knowing they may not gain anything from their encounter but still feeling alive and loving every single moment of passion they share together. The guitars start us on the journey, gently, but dive into long dramatic riffs as the story develops. As the vocals begin to overlap and build, the chaos created between lovers is reflected in the cacophony of sounds, driving us clear to the dramatic end.”

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