Opening with their new single 'Parachute' Norwegian three piece band Hollywood have just released their new album 'Close To You'. Quoting their promo for the album "Close To You” is a record full of guilty pleasures, grandiose choruses and cinematic lyrics wrapped in a sound of 80s and 90s alternative pop". It's a very honest description making my life easy, it's also an album worth hearing in full.
Back in 2017 we featured Jordan Mackampa a couple of times and it is a real pleasure to share a new song from him entitled 'What Am I'. Beautifully arranged and allowing Jordan's incredible vocals to shine, this is a timeless soulful song, I really hope it's not too long until we hear more from this very talented artist.
It's just four weeks since we first featured Shhe who returns today with another captivating song entitled 'Emma'. We described the previous track (Saint Cyrus) as "refined and dreamy" and this piece progresses from there adding atmosphere and feeling to her increasingly impressive repertoire.
Winola Oak has already gained our attention in a big way twice this year, firstly with a stripped down version of her debut single (He Don't Love Me) and then last month with 'Break My Broken Heart' a song that has attracted huge attention. She returns with both a stripped version and a live one for this fabulous track.
Between Suns feat. Crudded Badz share a fine video for 'Fractured Life'. The feisty vibe and mixture of genres are equally matched by the music video, on paper I am far to old for a song like this, but it is just so catchy and imaginatively produced.
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Lucie Tiger is excited to release her newest single Apple Tree and its B-side Baby Don’t You Go, two songs that show her reverence for decades gone by while staying fresh and modern in a world that desperately needs more love.
Recorded and produced at Delta King Studios in Sydney (The Middle Kids, Dean Lewis, Guy Sebastian), Apple Tree is a glorious melting pot of slide guitar and organ, delivering flashbacks to when Dylan went electric mixed with Australia’s newest export, The Teskey Brothers. Meanwhile, Baby Don’t You Go is an ode to those in love and those who want to be in love with soaring vocals grounded by barn dance drums and stunning piano lines.
‘Apple Tree paints a picture of a beautiful place in the countryside,’ explains Lucie Tiger, ‘all it needs is the love of your life to show up and it’ll be perfect. Baby Don’t You Go is a classic love song but with an old-school blues twist right at the end.’
After releasing the single, Lucie Tiger will be heading over to the United States to tour Chicago, Nashville, Muscle Shoals, Memphis and Clarksdale - cities and towns that mean so much to her, inspiring and almost magical places. Especially when it comes to Clarksdale, where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. As well as playing shows, Lucie will also be recording in some of the most famous, historic studios in the history of modern music - Sun Studios in Memphis (made famous by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, as well as Chris Isaac, more recently) and FAME Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals (which has hosted the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, the Allman Brothers, not to mention Tim McGraw and the Dixie Chicks in recent years) to name a couple.
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Norwegian three-piece Hollywood is the new consummate of, until recently, solo artists; Billie Van, Jonas Alaska and Mikhael Paskalev. Like their collective namesake suggests, the band invokes not only a hallmark of dreams for the aspirational through equally dreamlike compositions, but also the melancholy and heartbreak of the most that don’t ‘make it’. Unironic and unabashed panoramas of late-80s high-school romance sheen with nostalgia, while some tracks reveal cinematic melodramatics, painting the full-length with a range of conceptual textures.
New Single ‘Parachute’ crawls like a Cigarettes After Sex-esque alt-rock ballad, beginning with vintage harpsichord synthesisers which act as a central theme to the track. And meeting with a delicate fervency, the softly spoken tones of Alaska move from the monophonic, to the polyphonic when fellow band members harmonise and craft a draft of sound.
The project is the result of a creative excess amongst three close friends. After contributing to each other's solo successes for the last decade, the time was finally ripe to begin blurring their boundaries and discover a bolder, more playful approach to their songwriting.
The band was conceived around the same time they set up their own record label ‘Braveheart’ and studio in Oslo. A fresh vehicle for their own individually established artistic careers as well as their newest collective pursuit.
“Close To You” is a record full of guilty pleasures, grandiose choruses and cinematic lyrics wrapped in a sound of 80s and 90s alternative pop. The new record is produced by the band themselves over a period of two years, and mixed mostly by their own Mikhael Paskalev. The result is an unusual and interesting voyage, which takes many turns between different styles of songwriting and production. Hollywood has been playing some of Norways key festivals already, such as Villvill Vest and Øya. This autumn they will tour Norway’s largest cities with a more intimate concert experience.
Hollywood release ‘Parachute’ and their debut album ‘Close To You’ on the 20th September via their own label Braveheart.
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Jordan Mackampa steps further into his true self with 'What Am I'. The questioning single is executed with soulful resilience against a backdrop of resplendent horns, harmonious percussion and orchestral strings - and if you listen closely - a funk undertow.
It's the kind of song that sweeps you off your feet, carried by Mackampa's powerful-yet-amicable vocals reminiscent of Lianne La Havas .The zenith of the track, around the three minute mark, is especially poignant as the songwriter pivots between uplifting instrumentation and his own sense of unknowing. He repeats’ "what am I supposed to do?" capturing the feeling of a generation, lost. As the track comes to an end, Mackampa leaves us without an answer, left to ponder the question on everyone’s lips. ‘What Am I’ was produced by Dani Castelar (Paolo Nutini).
Sarah Speaking on the track, Jordan quotes: "What Am I is a modern take on Marvin Gaye’s classic ‘What’s Going On’, highlighting the state of the world right now, from multiple wars in different territories; how the earth is dying, to the border control problem & how it’s been dealt with. It’s a lot of ‘hopes and prayers’, changing of display pictures to blue, but all trickling down to a stop soon after, as it’s no longer in the forefront of the media.
I wrote this song in the mindset of how I need to do more but don’t know how because I am only one man, trying his best to make change within the means available."The London based soul singer is the combination of his Congolese roots and midlands upbringing. His soul soaked, indie driven tracks swim in the sounds and stories of the cities he’s inhabited over the years. Inspired by his mother’s love of the great soul singers, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield, Jordan combines his timeless vocal with catchy melodies and heartfelt lyrics to create an exciting hybrid of alternative pop and soul which will enchant and uplift in equal measure.
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Scottish-Portuguese artist and producer SHHE has today shared a brand new single taken from her forthcoming self-titled album. Emma is a pulsing reflection of an unhealthy relationship. SHHE is the alter-ego of solo artist Su Shaw, a captivating songwriter who wraps carefully constructed electronic soundscapes around delicate yet self-assured vocals. The artist’s upcoming self-titled debut album tracks a period of intense personal change, due for release 11th October on One Little Indian Records.
The musician only had to release one single, Eyes Shut (which premiered on Dazed), to find herself signing a record deal with One Little Indian Records and opening for Kathryn Joseph on her February UK tour.
"This is not a song about unrequited love. It’s about something that feels more destructive" said SHHE. "There’s an internal drone that you hear from the beginning, this constant reminder, an uneasiness. It feels a bit symptomatic of motion sickness. It's overpowering. And there are all these mixed messages, this confusing build up of hopefulness and hopelessness.
"It’s about a relationship that is unhealthy. You still have unanswered questions and you’re still trying to make sense of everything. The track is about the aftermath of that. It’s about letting go. It's about seeing things how they really are. It’s about reclaiming strength through that process."
To question her own identity, SHHE had to first deconstruct it. This involved leaving her former life in Fife, including her relationship, and relocating to Dundee, where SHHE found herself in the company of creatives – dancers, musicians, visual artists – who helped to widen her musical vision. One of those people was photographer Harry Clark, who was also a dancer with Scottish Dance Theatre at the time, and who collaborated with Shaw on her first outing as ‘SHHE’ on the attention-grabbing single Eyes Shut. Incorporating visuals in the form of contemporary dance gave Shaw a wider understanding of how other mediums could impact and enforce the message of her work; the video for the single told the story of a love affair and a journey of self-discovery between two male dancers.
SHHE has found herself on the precipice of unlimited creativity and she’s ready to dive in headfirst. Her debut record is only the beginning of this journey.
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Swedish born, LA-based artist Winona Oak releases a haunting stripped version of new single “Break My Broken Heart” via Neon Gold Records / Atlantic Records. Earlier this week, Winona Oak shared the live piano performance video.
Winona Oak about “”Break My Broken Heart”: “You have to be brave to love someone with all your heart. But the biggest risk in life is to not take any risks at all. As long as we’re breathing, what’s one more scar?”
Born and raised in the Nordic forests of Sweden on a small crop of land called Sollerön - known as the Island of the Sun - Winona Oak is every bit as enchanting as her origin story. With a childhood spent encountering more animals than people, she grew up a trained horse acrobat and pursued creative expression however she could, writing poetry and songs from a young age. Born into a musical family, Winona sang throughout her youth and began playing violin at 5 years old and piano at 9 years.
After moving to Stockholm to pursue her passion for music, a leap of faith to attend Neon Gold Records’ writing retreat in the Nicaraguan jungle in 2017 led her to Australian electronic maestro What So Not. She would go on to co-write his next two singles "Better" and "Stuck In Orbit", eventually stepping into the spotlight as both the writer and featured artist on his 2018 single "Beautiful" HERE, which took home the 2019 AIR Award for Best Independent Dance Single at the Australian Independent Music Awards.
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Following last year’s extraordinary debut single, Sun Ra, with its eye-frying psychedelics and glam strut, their brand new single is Fractured Life, a song about life on the road which in the space of three-and-a-bit minutes hits disco, hard rock, grime and ends up somewhere hot and exotic.
Featuring grime artist, Crudded Badz, the track showcases Between Suns’ universal appeal; where grime and rock have met to form a relationship that stands as a testament to both worlds.
Produced by music legend Nick Tauber (Thin Lizzy; Marillion; Toyah), their disregard for convention and expectations set them apart as one of the most exciting rock acts in years. The combined talents of songwriter and guitarist, Paul Lisak and astonishing vocalist Nausicaa, no reference points will make sense, yet your mind will try to compute some order to their kaleidoscope of musical freakery – Jimmy Page sharing a house with Judy Garland; Boney M scrapping it out with Jimi Hendrix; Abba joined in marriage to Ravi Shankar by Reverend Ice Cube. Forget everything you’ve ever heard – Between Suns are the real deal.
Detroit – New York – Seattle – Leytonstone. The new music hub of the world is in East London and it’s all wrapped up in one band. Fine artist and guitar virtuoso, Paul Lisak and French operatically trained chanteuse Nausicaä met despite circumstances seemingly conspiring to keep them apart. Signed up to an online company designed to pair up singers looking for musicians, Paul was not even in the market for band mates and was in the habit of deleting the daily deluge of email notifications as soon as they hit his inbox. For reasons unknown, on this particular day, he deleted all but one. Days later, he opened it to find a young French girl looking for a band - a classically trained singer who had left France for London and the music scene which had provided so many of her favourite artists, despite being unable to speak a word of English. Their united determination to challenge the norm through their art led to an extraordinary musical relationship which over three years and the expert stewardship of the legendary producer, Nick Tauber is finally ready for the world to taste.
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