Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Releases a Swaggering Banger

Over the course of the past 13 months or so, I’ve spilled copious amounts of ink covering the frenetically prolific, French electronic music artist, producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. And during that 13 month period, the French JOVM mainstay has released an incredibly array of EPs, standalone singles and albums with material that generally draws from techno, with elements of deep house and EDM among other electronic music genres, sub-genres and styles.

The French JOVM mainstay artist started off 2021 with his latest full-length album Pi. Written and recorded in an inspired three month burst, Pi finds LutchamaK crafting the darkest and heaviest material of his rapidly expanding catalog to date. So far, the French electronic music artist and producer has released one single off the album — the trance inducing and expansive, Tour de France-era Kraftwerk-like “KindaHot.”

Pi’s latest single “Gesture” is swaggering and infectious banger centered around squiggling and wobbling synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, a glistening melody and a sample from the 2013 major motion picture The Family. The track manages to be deceptively faster than what it seems — but as LutchamaK explains he attempted to be craft a simpler composition that mixes techno and pop, while paired with a message that he says is close to his heart.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays L.A. Witch Return with a Badass Biker Movie Influenced Visual

With the release of 2017’s self-titled debut, the Los Angeles-based garage rock trio and JOVM mainstays L.A. Witch — Sade Sanchez (lead vocals, guitar), Irita Pai (bass, backing vocals) and Ellie English (drums) — quickly established their sound and aesthetic: jangling, reverb-drenched guitar rock seemingly influenced by including late 50s-early 60s rock, The Pleasure Seekers, The Sonics, The Black Angels, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and others, that simultaneously drew comparisons to fellow JOVM mainstays The Coathangers, Sharkmuffin and Death Valley Girls.

The members of L.A. Witch have readily admitted that the writing and recording sessions for their self-titled album was a casual affair — with the album’s material coming together over the course of several years. The natural and seemingly effortless creative flow hit a snag when the band’s profile and popularity grew and they began touring regularly. So when the trio got together to write and record last year’s sophomore album Play With Fire, they felt that they needed a new strategy.

Between their touring schedule, studio availability and the timeline for releasing an album last year, the members of L.A. Witch only had two months to write Play With Fire. The trio holed up during January and February — right before March’s mandatory COVID-19 related lockdowns put the entire world on pause. “As far the creative process goes, this record is a result of sheer willingness to write,” L.A. Witch’s Sade Sanchez said in press notes. “When you sit down and make things happen, they will happen, rather than waiting to be inspired.” The time constraints and tightly focused writing sessions forced the band into new territories. “I’ve definitely learned that having restrictions forces you to think outside the box,” the band’s Irita Pai says. “That structure really brings about creativity in an unexpected and abundant way.”

Play With Fire finds the band pushing their sound forward with a muscular insistence but while not being a complete reinvention either. And thematically, the album may arguably be their most sobering work of their catalog to date. “Play With Fire is a suggestion to make things happen,” L.A. Witch’s Sanchez explains. “Don’t fear mistakes or the future. Take a chance. Say and do what you really feel, even if nobody agrees with your ideas. These are feelings that have stopped me in the past. I want to inspire others to be freethinkers even if it causes a little burn.”

Last year, I wound up writing about two of Play With Fire’s singles:

“Gen-Z,”a scuzzy and expansive, beer add whiskey field rockabilly blues that seethes with dissatisfaction and frustration.
“True Believers,” a deceptive return to from with a subtle post-punk leaning that brings JOVM mainstays Ganser to mind; but much like its predecessor, “True Believers” it’s centered around a seething disgust over a morally bankrupt world — and a paradigm that needs too die.

Play With Fire’s latest single “Motorcycle Boy” is one part Phil Spector Wall of Sound production, one part Dum Dum Girls and one part scuzzy power chord-driven psych rock delivered with a sultry and badass air. “The song is inspired by Moto Boys like Mickey Rourke, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen, so of course we took a lot of inspiration from our favorite biker movies like The Wild One, Rumble Fish, On Any Sunday, Easy Rider, Hells Angels ’69 and The Girl on a Motorcycle,” L.A. Witch’s Sadie Sanchez explains,. ” I had worked with (director) Ambar Navarro and Max on another project and loved their other work, so we wanted to work with them on this. They definitely did their homework and came up with a cool story line. I got to feature my bike that I’d been rebuilding during the pandemic. It was nice to shoot a video where you get to do two of your favorite things, riding motorcycles and play guitar.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dallas’ Nicole Marxen Releases a Feverish Loss-Fueled Visual for Cathartic “Tether”

Nicole Marxen is a Dallas-based musician and visual artist, best known for being a member of the acclaimed, avant-garde pop act Midnight Opera, an act that has been featured by outlets like BrooklynVegan, Impose Magazine, Tiny Mix Tapes, Daytrotter and The Observer — and QVC, who highlighted the act in an original docs-series on beauty and glamour. Additionally, the band was awarded “Best Group Act” by The Dallas Observer for their mesmerizing live show, which melds opulent set design, choreography and costumes.

Marxen steps out into the limelight as a solo artist with her forthcoming solo debut Tether EP. Recored at John Congleton’s Elmwood Studio with Alex Bhore, Tether is a meditation on grieving and loss, influenced and informed by the sudden death of Marxen’s mother — and the EP’s material may arguably be the most personal effort of the Dallas- based musician and visual artist’s career to date. “I used to think that my life wasn’t worth writing about,” says Marxen. “I hid behind the characters I created, the haven of the stage, the armor of costume. My art was elaborate escapism.”

Fittingly, “Tether,” the EP’s first single and title track is a dark and brooding goth-like track featuring layers of wobbling and arpeggiated synths, skittering beats, industrial clang and clatter, scorching guitars and Marxen’s achingly vulnerable, soaring vocals that evokes a brewing storm of uneasy and complicated emotions coming to the surface in ways that the song’s narrator can’t completely comprehend or predict.

“In many ways, it was a crucial first step in my own grieving process and self-discovery as a songwriter. Being so rooted in showmanship, I hadn’t explored such vulnerability in my work before,” Marxen explains. “When I began to shift my efforts inward, I found that my truth very much needed to be expressed. The song serves as a reminder to hold space for myself.”

Directed by Judd Myers, the recently released video for “Tether” is lustrously shot black and white fever dream of nostalgia, heartache and loss featuring old home videos, lonely black top and Marxen underwater. Each frame is much like a surrealistic painting full of intense cathartic emotion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Releases a Trance-Inducing Banger

Over the course of the past 13 months or so, I’ve spilled copious amounts of ink covering the frenetically prolific, French electronic music artist, producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. And during that 13 month period, the French JOVM mainstay has released an incredibly array of EPs, standalone singles and albums that features material that generally draws from techno, while reflecting a lifelong love of eclecticism, as his work frequently possesses elements of deep house and EDM among other electronic music genres, styles and sub-genres.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Pierre Grech is a Toulon, France-based singer/songwriter, composer, producer and guitarist, who has long been influenced by folk, indie rock, hip hop, jazz, contemporary classical and electronica. Grech began writing songs as a child but he can trace the origins of his music career to the early 2000s: He was the frontman of experimental electronica act SLiDD — and around the same time, he co-wrote and arranged material on three Jen H. Ka albums.

As a solo artist and bandleader, Grech has played shows across Paris and Southern France with re-arranged and re-imagined renditions of his material in several different iterations including electro rock, acoustic, cello-guitar duo, rock trio and more. But over the past few years, the French singer/songwriter, guitarist, composer, arranger and producer has been refining and honing his songwriting and compositional approach, as well as his guitar playing. The en result is Grech’s latest project _telemaque_, which finds the Toulon-based artist drawing from his long-held influences while crafting energetic and sensitive pop.

Grech’s _telemaque_ debut, June EP was released last Wednesday and the EP’s latest single, EP title track “June” is a gorgeous and deliberately crafted track featuring shimmering acoustic guitar, Grech’s plaintive falsetto, propulsive drumming and a soaring hook. And while sonically bringing OK Computer-era Radiohead and JOVM mainstays Husky to mind, the song is centered around earnest lyricism and accessible, pop-leaning songwriting.

Beyond the recording of the album, a collaboration with New York artist Dani Choi is underway to illustrate each track on the album.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: HAERTS Performs “For The Sky” on “Late Show with Stephen Colbert”

Throughout the course of this site’s decade-plus history, I’ve spilled copious amounts of virtual ink covering JOVM mainstays HAERTS. Tracing their origins back to a budding high school romance in Munich, the acclaimed indie pop act have evolved as its founding (and core) duo — Nini Fabi (vocals) and Benny Gebert (keys, guitar) — have evolved: HAERTS was formed when the duo met their now-former bandmates while studying at Berklee College of Music. Upon graduation, the quintet relocated to Brooklyn, where they quickly built up a profile and released their major label, self-titled, Jean-Philip Grobler-produced. full-length debut.

After a series of lineup changes in which the band’s founding duo has remained, Fabi and Gebert relocated to the woods of Upstate New York, where they worked on and released their sophomore album, 2018’s New Compassion. Since the release of New Compassion, Fabi and Gebert have embraced their early international roots by splitting their time between Berlin and New York — and during that same period, they have been fueled by a renewed spirit of collaboration with musicians and visual artists they’ve long admired including Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste and Julian Klincewicz, who they worked with on POWER/LAND.

As you may recall, the duo’s third album Dream Nationis slated for a March 12, 2021 release, and the album’s material is reportedly marked by a sense of urgent intensity: Fabi and Gebert wrote the album over the course of about a month — and as soon as they finished, they recorded most of the album with their touring band during a week-long, live recording session in New York. Then they went to Los Angeles, where they put the finishing touches on the album and collaborated with Ed Droste on the album’s first single “For the Sky.” (I’ll be getting to that one in a little bit.)

Sonically, Dream Nation will continue to draw their long-held comparisons to Fleetwood Mac and First Aid Kit, but with subtle nods at Portishead and Lamb. “We went into the studio without setting limits or parameters other than that we wanted to make a record that moves you emotionally and physically,” Fabi and Gebert explain. “We wanted it to feel like an invitation into the strange and fantastical night time world, like the songs they play just before the lights come on, when the party is almost over, and the polish is gone.”

Recently Fabi and Gebert were on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where they performed a gorgeous, acoustic version of Dream Nation’s first single “For the Sky,” a song that as Nini Fabi explained in press notes “came from a dream I had when I first found out that I was pregnant, which was the catalyst and beginning of writing new music.” Naturally, the acoustic version finds HAERTS stripping the layers of the studio version to leave the studs and beams — Fabi’s soaring vocals and the song’s heartfelt, lived-in lyricism.

The live footage was shot in a paradisal backyard and features HAERTS’ core duo with their gurgling, new baby. And admittedly while the live version of the song is just gorgeous, there are few things that I find myself drawn to:

This family is so adorable. They radiate love and happiness.
The kid is absolutely in love with mom’s voice.
Imagine this child being told that they inspired an album and its first single before they were even here; that mom shot a video for that same song, pregnant with you; and when you were finally here, they performed the song on Colbert with you in her lap.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TRZTN Teams Up with Karen O on a Glitchy and Futuristic Single and Visual

Tristan Bechet is an acclaimed Portuguese-born, Paris-based (by way of Brazil and NYC), singer/songwriter, composer, producer, sound designerr and electronic music artist, who has developed and honed an idiosyncratic approach to music and sound design through stints fronting industrial no wave act Flux Information Sciences electronic rock duo SERVICES and Sauna Kings and with his solo recording project TRZTN.

Bechet has composed pieces for an impressive and eclectic array of internationally renowned brands including Nike, Karl Lagerfeld, Dior, Chanel, Givenchy and The Creator’s Project — with some of his work being featured by The New York Times, Nowness and many others. The Portuguese-born, Paris-based composer, producer, singer/songwriter and electronic music artist is currently composing the score fo a psychological horror drama film.

Bechet’s latest TRZTN album, the recently released Royal Dagger Ballet is an edgy yet lush and mesmerizing compilation of genre-defying, experimental industrial tracks featuring guest spots from Jonathan Bree, Surfbort’s Dani Miller, Ize Teixeira, Estrael Boiso, Interpol’s Paul Banks, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O and countless others. Each individual track manages to inhabit its own different world — and that shouldn’t be surprising as some of the album’s songs are cinematic and melodic and others are more cacophonous and industrial.

Royal Dagger Ballet’s latest single “Hieroglyphs” is a slow-burning track centered around an eerie track that sonically seems to continuously disintegrate and reintegrate, as its centered around industrial clang and clatter, glitchy and chopped up vocal samples, buzzing bass synths, atmospheric and melodic synths — and it’s all held together by Karen O’s imitable and expressive vocals. “‘Hieroglyphs’ resembles an odd Lynchian dreamstate; bizarre and beautiful. A sonic portrait that warbles away into space dust,” Bechet explains in press notes.

Bechet and Karen O have been frequent collaborators throughout the years, including work together on the music for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are and the Rise of The Tomb Raider video game.The writing process behind “Hieroglyphs began after Bechet sent Karen O an initial sonic sketch, to which she quickly recorded her cosmic lyrics. “Without holding back, I embarked on a phantasmagorical way of production – sculpting sound more than composing conventionally. I recorded clangs and digital white noise. I re-shaped her voice, deformed the structure, and resampled her own vocals creating the main staccato vocal theme. The track disintegrates and falls back together like the push and pull of a rubber band stretching.”

Directed by Barnaby Roper, the recently released video for “Hieroglyphs” is a glitchy fever dream in which Victoria Dauberville, appearing as though she just ended a shift at an office job and walking into an empty parking garage to expressively dance — until she’s taken into a wildly different dimension.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Emerging French Electro Pop Act Melrøse Releases an Intimate and Sensual Single and Visual

Melrøse is an emerging French electro pop duo — Anne-Camille and Anthony — that can trace its origins back to last June, when the romantic couple and musical collaborators decided to immortalize their relationship in a song, written while in a Los Angeles hotel room.

The duo’s debut single “Poolside,” the end result of that June night is an atmospheric song centered around Anne-Camille’s achingly delicate and ethereal vocals singing lyrics in French and English, skittering beats, twinkling keys and swirling electronics. The track — for me, at least — evokes late summer nights getting in the mood with a lover while sonically recalling Portishead.

The recently released video is a fittingly sensual and intimate visual featuring Melrøse’s Anne-Camille in an elegant black outfit and dark sunglasses — and in some way, it’s one part music video, and one part perfume/high fashion commercial.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Follow Balthazar on A Stylish Trip to a “Groundhog’s Day”-like Hell

Acclaimed Belgian indie rock act and JOVM mainstays Balthazar led by songwriting partners Maarten Devoldere and Jinte Deprez went on a hiatus several years ago that allowed for the duo to pursue their own, critically applauded solo effects — Devoldere’s brooding, hyper literature Warhaus.and Deprez’s old school R&B-inspired J. Bernardt. And while Devoldere and Deprez found the ability to pursue their own individual whims and muses liberating, they also found the time apart sparking an undeniable urge to work together again, propelled a greater mutual respect for each other’s individual work and a much broader artistic vision.

When the members of Balthazar reconvened to work on 2019’s Fever, they did so without any particular plan. Their hope was to improve upon their previously released work, show deeper artistic growth, and to further the band’s story. Interestingly, when the band’s primary writing team began to write Fever’s material, they mutually agreed that the album would have a less serious, less melancholy tone. And as a result, the album’s material may arguably be among the loosest and most playful of their careers while maintaining the deliberate craftsmanship and razor sharp hooks that have won them national and international attention.

Balthazar supported Fever with a relentless touring schedule that included a stop at Baby’s All Right. Feeling invigorated from playing Fever on tour, Devoldere and Deprez started working on a new batch material that included the sultry, Quiet Storm-like “Halfway,” a track that found the band continuing where their last album left off — but while pushing the overall sound and aesthetic in an even more accessible, pop-leaning direction.

Interestingly, the JOVM mainstays’ fifth album Sand reportedly finds the band fully embracing the soulful alt pop/R&B sound of “Halfway” while crafting what the band believes is the most cohesive album of their careers to date. “There’s a theme running through these tracks, waiting, restlessness, not being able to live in the moment or putting your trust into the future,” Balthazar’s Deprez and Devoldere explain in press notes. “We’re at a point in our lives when we have to consider these aspects of life, that’s why the album is called Sand – after the sand in an hourglass.”

“The idea was always to drop another album as soon as possible after Fever. It was fun and we wanted to build on that,” Jinte Deprez says in press notes. “We did a lot of things that we haven’t done previously – we’ve never used as many drum samples or used bass synths before. So that was an exciting step for us. It was a very modern way of making an album, due to the constraints of the pandemic and we had to work remotely and converse electronically rather than in a studio.” “I can’t wait to play this album live because on the Fever tour we pushed the groove element further,” Maarten Devoldere adds.

So far I’ve written about two of Sand’s official singles:

“Losers,” a slinky, disco-tinged yet sophisticated track centered around Devoldere’s sultry baritone, shimmering synth arpeggios and an infectious hook, but at its core, the song captures the anxious uncertainty of our moment, a moment in which most of us feel as though our personal and professional lives have been in an indefinite stasis.
“You Won’t Come Around,” a slow-burning and cinematic, R&B-inspired track featuring shimmering strings, strummed acoustic guitar, skittering beats and Devoldore expressing a confusing yet familiar series of emotions: regret and heartache that a romantic relationship has ended, relief that the relationship has ended and guilt that maybe they’ve moved on a bit too quickly; or in other words, the gnawing sense that you might be a selfish, uncaring asshole.

Clocking in at a little under four minutes, “On A Roll,” Sand’s latest single finds the JOVM mainstays crafting a strutting and seamless synthesis of their pre-Fever sound with their recent R&B-influenced leanings with the track featuring buzzing bass synths, slinky guitar lines, glistening synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line, a mournful horn arrangement and skittering beats, Deprez’s soulful crooning and falsetto.

Directed by Pieter De Cnudde, the recently released and incredibly cinematic video for “On A Roll” was shot at the NH Hotel in Bruges, Belgium, and follows Balthazar’s songwriting duo in a Groundhog’s Day-like hell.”The song and video is about the repetitive lack of control you have on situations, your life, your own ways,” Deprez explains in press notes. “Even for a moment when you think you can escape your own loop, you find yourself right back at the start again, finding out the changes didn’t change the outcome, or you.”

Sand is slated for a February 26, 2020 release though Play It Again Sam.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Throughout the course of this site’s decade-plus history, I’ve spilled copious amounts of virtual ink covering JOVM mainstays HAERTS. Tracing their origins back to a budding high school romance in Munich, the acclaimed indie pop act have evolved as its founding (and core) duo — Nini Fabi (vocals) and Benny Gebert (keys, guitar) — have evolved: HAERTS was formed when the duo met their now-former bandmates while studying at Berklee College of Music. And upon graduation, the quintet relocated to Brooklyn, where they quickly built up a profile and released their major label, self-titled, Jean-Philip Grobler-produced. full-length debut. 

After a series of lineup changes, the JOVM mainstays settled to its current lineup — its founding and core duo — and relocated to the Upstate New York woods, where they wrote and recorded their sophomore album, 2018’s New Compassion. Since the release of New Compassion, Fabi and Gebert have fully embraced their multi-national roots by splitting time between Berlin and New York. Around the same time, the duo have found themselves fueled by a renewed spirit of collaboration with artists and visual artists they’ve long admired, including Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste and Julian Klincewicz, who they worked with on POWER/LAND. 

As you may recall, the duo’s third album Dream Nation is slated for a March 12, 2021 release, and reportedly the album’s material is marked by a sense of urgent intensity: Fabi and Gebert wrote the album over the course of about a month — and as soon as they finished, they recorded most of the album with their touring band during a week-long, live recording session in New York. Then they went to Los Angeles, where they put the finishing touches on the album and collaborated with Ed Droste on the album’s first single “For the Sky.”

Sonically, Dream Nation will continue to draw their long-held comparisons to Fleetwood Mac and First Aid Kit, but with subtle nods at Portishead and Lamb. “We went into the studio without setting limits or parameters other than that we wanted to make a record that moves you emotionally and physically,” Fabi and Gebert explain. “We wanted it to feel like an invitation into the strange and fantastical night time world, like the songs they play just before the lights come on, when the party is almost over, and the polish is gone.”

I’ve written about two of the album’s released singles:

  • The aforementioned “For the Sky.” Prominently featuring Fabi’s gorgeous vocals, shimmering guitars, persistent drumming, a soaring hook and a guest spot from Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste, “For the Sky” continues a run of carefully crafted pop centered around lived-in lyricism.
  • “It’s Too Late” is a glistening, hook-driven pop confection that sonically — to my ears, at least — is a slick synthesis of Fleetwood Mac, Shuggie Otis, Avalon-era Roxy Music.

“Shivering,” Dream Nation’s latest single is centered around an arpeggiated organ groove, stuttering four-on-the-floor, a shimmering guitar solo, jazz funk and disco vibes and Fabi’s gorgeous and plaintive vocals. But just under the sinuous, dance floor friendly surface, there’s something much darker — with the song subtly evoking the desperate attempt to get one’s quickly racing mind in check.

“The song came from this organ groove Benny came up with and the onomatopoeic quality of the word ‘Shivering’ itself,” HAERTS’ Fabi explains in press notes. “It’s about the obsession and attraction of the things which give us anxiety and disturb us. In a way it’s our soundtrack to a panic attack.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 56th Birthday Jam Master Jay!

JOVM belatedly celebrates what would have been Jam Master Jay’s 56th birthday.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: New Colossus Festival 2020: Au Review Party at Lola NYC feat. Jaguar Jonze

Live concert photography of Jaguar Jonze performing at Au Review’s New Colossus Festival party last March.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: French Singer-Songwriter Laure Briard Releases a Breezy and Bittersweet New Single

Throughout the course of last year, I wrote a bit about the rising Toulouse, France-based singer/songwriter Laure Briard. Briard has had an uncommon path to professional music: the French singer/songwriter bounced around several different interests and passions, including studying literature and criminology, and even doing a bit of acting before concentrating on music full-time on music back in 2013.

The Toulouse-based singer/songwriter initially signed with Tricatel Records, who released her debut EP. After the EP’s release, Briard met with Juilen Gasc and Eddy Cramps and began working on what would become her attention grabbing full-length debut, 2015’s Révélation, an effort inspired by Françoise Hardy, Margo Guryan and Vashti Bunyan that featured a very modern and poetic lyricism. She then signed with Midnight Special Records, who released her sophomore album, 2016’s Sur la Piste de Danse.

Since Sur la Pisa de Danse, Briard’s work has increasingly been influenced by Bossa nova: 2018’s Coração Louco, featured lyrics written and sung in Portuguese — and a guest spot from acclaimed Brazilian JOVM mainstays and Latin Grammy Award nominated act Boogarins. 2019’s Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plâit, which was released through Michel Records in Canada, Midnight Special Records in Europe and Burger Records here in the States continued Briard’s ongoing love affair with Bossa nova and Brazilian music.

Slated for a February 19, 2021 through Michel Records in North America, Dinosaur City Records in Australia and Midnight Special Records in Europe, the Toulouse-based singer/songwriter’s forthcoming EP En Voo sees Briard continuing her successful collaboration with Boogarins, as well as with her longtime collaborators Vincent Guyot, a.k.a. Octopus and Marius Duflot. If you were frequenting this site over the course of last year, you may recall that I wrote about En VOO’s first single, EP title track “En Voo,” 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meets 70s AM radio rock-like take on Bossa nova, featuring Briard’s ethereal vocals cooing in Portuguese, twinkling Rhodes, shimmering guitars and jazz-fusion that evokes the swooning euphoria of reuniting with a long-lost love.

“Supertrama,” En Voo’s second and latest single continues in a similar vein as its predecessor: 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meets 70s AM rock featuring twinkling piano, shuffling jazz-like drumming, a sinuous bass line, a regal horn arrangement, angular bursts of guitar and a soaring hook within an expansive yet breezy song arrangement. But just underneath the breezy surface, the song evokes a familiar bittersweet ache. The track can trace its origins to a piano melody that Briard wrote in France. She then took the track too Brazilian musician and composer Giovanni Cidreira, who helped write the song’s lyrics. The track, along with the rest of the EP was recorded in São Paulo-based Dissenso Studio with Boogarins as her backing band.

“I met Giovani through the Boogarins, who he both collaborates and shares a friendship with,” Briard says of her collaboration with Cidreira. “I admire Giovani’s voice, his words, his stories, and the possibility of working with him one day quickly became a reality. Once I’d written the melody of ‘Supertrama,’ I took the plunge and asked Giovani if he would write the lyrics with me. He took the melody and wrote lyrics which don’t quite tell a story, but rather feelings, impressions, and memories. Just like the rest of the EP, the arrangements were made in real time in the studio. Pieuvre Convex was responsible for the final modulation of the track – he’s a king in that area!”