Tag: Eurosonic Festival

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays Belau Team Up With Cuba’s Sexto Sentido on a Gorgeous Spiritual Single

With the release of their debut single “Island of Promise,” the Budapest-based electronic music production and artist duo Belau — Peter Kedves and Buzas Krisztian — quickly exploded into the national scene for a buoyant, summery and dance floor friendly sound that according to the rising Hungarian electronic duo meant to evoke “cheerful places, filled with sunshine, where one can relax, unwind and find peace and harmony.”

“Island of Promise” eventually landed at #1 on Deezer Hungary, one of the country’s biggest streaming services. Since its release, “Island of Promise” has amassed over 500,000 streams, was featured in the HBO Hungary series Aranyélet, and in an international Pepsi ad campaign shown in 33 countries.

Building upon growing profile, Belau’s full-length debut, 2016’s The Odyssey won a Hungarian Grammy for Best Electronic Music Album. The albums as supported with an intense touring schedule — 120 shows in 19 countries with stops across the international festival circuit, including sets at Eurosonic, Sziget, Reeperbahn, Untold, and SXSW. After The Odyssey, the JOVM mainstays released a series of remixes of The Odyssey tracks, and a handful of singles that included “Breath,” a sultry, dance floor friendly collaboration with Sophie Lindinger centered around glitchy beats and a sinuous yet anthemic hook and the Massive Attack-like “Natural Pool.”

2019’s sophomore effort Colourwave found the JOVM mainstays expanding upon the sound that won them international attention as you would have heard on two of the album’s singles:

“Rapture,” a collaboration with Blue Foundation‘s Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg centered around a trip hop-inspired production featuring shimming synth arpeggios, wobbling low end and Stubbe Teglbjærg’s sultry vocals.
“Essence,” a collaboration with Sophie Barker that features Barker’s sultry vocals gliding over a shimmering production centered around looping, reverb-drenched guitar shimmering synths, skittering beats and an enormous hook that brought Third-era Portishead and Octo Octa to mind – but a with a brooding air.

“Luz,” is the highly anticipated follow up to 2019’s Colourwaves and the track, which features Sexto Sentido — Arlety Valdés and Yudelkis Lafuente — is a decided sonic departure for the JOVM mainstays that reminds me of fellow JOVM mainstays Ibeyi with the track being centered around shimmering and atmospheric synths and skittering beats and Sexto Sentido’s gorgeous and expressive vocals singing lyrics in Yoruba and Spanish. The end result is an otherworldly track that stretches towards the infinite.

“’Luz’ is kind of a bridge to our future album; it’s a bit different from our earlier releases.,” the Budapest-based JOVM mainstays explain. “This single is a harmonic blend of traditional Afro-Cuban folk music and modern electronica, the lyrics in yoruba and spanish. This song is a spiritual journey for us, it will be the part of Colourwave DLX album with some remixes, reimagined versions and live sessions in April.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Eerie Yet Cinematic Visuals for Belau’s “Breath”

With the release of their first single “Island of Promise,” the Budapest, Hungary-based electronic music production and artist duo Belau, comprised of Peter Kedves and Buzas Krisztian quickly received attention across their native Hungary for a buoyant, summery and dance floor friendly sound meant to evoke “cheerful places, filled with sunshine, where one can relax, unwind and find peace and harmony,” as the duo explain in press notes. In fact, the single landed at number 1 on Deezer Hungary, one of the country’s biggest streaming services, and since its release has amassed over 500,000 streams, has been featured in the HBO Hungary series Aranyélet and in an international Pepsi ad campaign shown in 33 countries. 

Building upon a growing profile, the duo’s 2016 full-length debut The Odyssey won the Hungarian Grammy for Best Electronic Music Album, and they followed that up with a period of intense touring over the next two years in which they played over 120 shows in 19 countries with stops at Eurosonic, Sziget, Reeperbahn, Untold, and SXSW. 

The duo’s latest single “Breath,” find the duo collaborating with vocalist Sophie Lindinger   in a sultry and dance floor friendly track in which Lindinger’s breathy vocals are paired with a buoyant and incredibly slick production centered around glitchy beats, finger snaps and a sinuous yet incredibly anthemic hook. Sonically speaking, the song reveals a duo that manages to balance an adventurous and forward-thinking sound with an accessible approach. 

Directed by Attila Damokos, the recently released video for “Breath’ is an incredibly cinematic video that follows a beautiful but very lonely woman, through a series of flashbacks — her dying her hair blonde, sitting in an old fashioned furnished apartment smoking cigarettes by herself and traveling by train through the Hungarian country. And while beautiful, it evokes an underlying ache at its core.