Tag: Little Boots

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Rising French Artist Clio Releases a Shimmering Pop Confection

Clio is a rising French singer/songwriter and pop artist, whose work is inspired by the spirit and aesthetic of short films with the rising French artist attempting to capture fleeting moments with intense, novelistic detail. So far, her previously released work has received over five million YouTube streams.

The rising French singer/songwriter and pop artist’s third full-length album is slated for a 2021 release, and the album’s latest single , the incredibly cinematic and melancholy pop confection “Vertige.” Centered around Clio’s ethereal cooing, shimmering synth arpeggios and a motorik groove, “Vertige” brings (to my ears, at least) Giorgio Moroder and Little Boots to mind; but while telling a a story of a girl, who ran away so much that she finally got lost — both mentally and emotionally.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Psychic Twin Releases an Intimate Yet Dance Floor Friendly Single

Erin Fein is a Urbana-Champaign, IL-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, producer and electro pop artist. Inspired by Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Grace Jones, Fein began writing and recording lush, synth-based solo material earlier this decade under the moniker Psychic Twin. As the story goes, Fein found that she was channeling energy that led her to believe that she was spiritually collaborating with her “other self,” a non-existent twin.

After the release of her debut single, 2012’s “Gonna Get Her,” Fein relocated to Brooklyn, where she released her second single “Strangers” and her full-length debut, 2016’s Strange Diary. Since the release of Strange Diary, Fein has relocated to Los Angeles, where she joined Empress Of’s touring band — and has been working on her long-awaited sophomore album, which is slated for release in 2020. In the meantime, “Water Meets Land” is the first bit of new, Psychic Twin material from Fein in three years, and the track is  shimmering and propulsive track that balances emotional intimacy with a slick, dance floor friendly production centered around shimmering and arpeggiated synths, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and Fein’s plaintive vocals. And while recalling Madonna, Stevie Nicks and Little Boots among others, the song comes from a deeply lived-in place, as it’s about struggle, acceptance and survival. 

“I have been through some very difficult experiences in the last 6 years of my life and I honestly didn’t know if I could survive,” Fein explains in press notes. “And to accompany it all, I experienced anxiety so debilitating that I considered suicide. For many years I was steadily falling apart. And then things began to change — because I began to change — because I chose to get help. I learned how to stand on my own, to trust my own resources and to look directly into the darkest and most painful experiences in my life and confront them.” 

Fein adds, “I want to share with anyone out there reading this that, if you are lost, you can learn to find your way again. If you’re willing to get help when you need it, you can learn to love and forgive yourself, without anyone else’s affirmation but your own. You can take the dagger out of your own heart and you can find the resources inside of yourself to do it. It is a life’s work, but it is possible.

“Lastly, I would like to dedicate this song to Trish Nelson, Natalie Saibel , Jamie Seet, Carla Rza Betts, Jessa Blades, Christina Lecki, and Kate Horne. To ‘The Team’ — All of you helped me to confront one of the most hidden places of pain in my life, you are survivors and you are champions, and I will always be grateful to all of you  .  .  .” 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Victoria Hesketh is a Blackpool, Lancashire, UK-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, electronic music artist, DJ and producer, best known by her critically and commercially successful solo recording project Little Boots, a project that actually derives its name from a nickname a girlfriend of hers gave to her, as a joking reference to Hesketh’s unusually small feet.

Hesketh’s forthcoming EP, Burn finds the renowned British-born singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, electronic music artist and DJ collaborating with some of the finest (and most talented) female, electronic music producers, and interestingly, the EP finds Hesketh leaning towards what may arguably be the most straightforward, club friendly material she has released in some time — perhaps since her 2013, Tim Goldsworthy-produced Nocturnes. “Creating a project focused on female talent is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and the process was incredibly inspiring. The producers involved hail from more underground backgrounds sonically and have very different approaches, but what tied everything together was their open mindedness and embrace of pop hooks and melodies,” Hesketh says of the concept behind the EP.  Burn‘s first single “Shadows,” pairs Hesketh’s sultry and ethereal vocals with a thumping yet shimmering, classic house music-leaning production, featuring infectious pop hooks from renowned underground producer Joyce Muniz.

As Hesketh explains, “The song is about trying to get on with your life but sometimes the past can get the better of you or overshadow you, and that’s ok. Sometimes you would rather take the darkest traces of someone’s love than lose it altogether, but when you finally break free from that cycle you open yourself up to new opportunities, and that’s often when beautiful things start to happen. Ultimately, the single finds Hesketh and Muniz focusing on the confusion of love and lust that should be universal and so frustratingly familiar — and yet, it makes such profound music.

“I really wanted to channel that dark, pulsing dance floor feeling but combine it with emotive lyrics and an uplifting melody, to get a kind of ’tears on the dance floor’ tension. I collaborated with Joyce Muniz, who is an amazing Brazilian producer and DJ based in Berlin. I’ve been a fan and spinning her tracks out for a while, so I was super excited to work together on this.”

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Dreamy and Psychedelic Sounds and Visuals of Brooklyn’s Panteon

Panteon is the recording project of Brooklyn-based Yvonne Ambree, an accomplished singer/songwriter, vocalist and musician, who has toured and worked with a wide range of artists including Sleigh Bells, Little Boots, Lulu Gainsbourg, Eli “Paperboy” Reed, and legendary soul singers, such as Syl Johnson, Ann Sexton and Gwen McCrae. Ambree is also known as one-half of the critically acclaimed duo Take Berlin, whose debut EP Lionize was named one of the “Top 10 EPs of 2013” by The Huffington Post, UK. 

Ambree’s debut as Panteon, Travel Log 1 EP is slated for a January 19, 2018 release, and the material on the EP is reportedly inspired by her travels across Europe and The Americas with each track being an ode to the experience of a particular locale she had been in, making the EP, a soundtrack for traveling, whether it be on the road, through the sea or through the air; but throughout the EP, Ambree weaves narratives of discovery and identity (which, unsurprisingly come up while traveling to some far off place).  Recorded in Berlin, Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio and Manhattan’s Sear Sound and mixed by renowned producer Howie Beck, who has worked with Feist, Jamie Lidell and Chilly Gonzales while featuring some of the New York area’s most notable session musicians including Snarky Puppy’s Jay Jennings contributing flugelhorn to EP single “Ballyvaughan,” and Grant Zubritsky, who has played in the backing band of Nick Murphy, formerly known as Chet Faker and MS MR, contributing bass on the EP’s latest single “White Jaguar,” a track written as a ode to the Kogi of Colombia, an indigenous civilization, who still live in the exact same fashion as they did 400 years ago, and consider themselves as guardians of the Earth. 
The ethereal song feels like a pleasant but half-remembered reverie bubbling up from the surface of the songwriter’s and listener’s subconscious as the song features a shimmering arrangement featuring strummed acoustic guitars, a sinuous bass line, soaring keys and propulsive drumming paired with Ambree’s gorgeous vocals — and while leaning towards the dreamy, retro-futuristic psychedelia of JOVM mainstays Pavo Pavo, the song captures the sense of awe over experiencing something you can never experience back at home. 

The recently released visuals for the song features gymnasts and dancers performing — but from old grainy negatives, which emphasizes the dreamy nature of the song, while adding to its aching nostalgia. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With singer/songwriter Victoria Celestine having spent a significant portion of her childhood growing up in France and in San Antonio, TX, music became a refuge and one of the languages she was most fluent in was music; in fact she first learned the piano and upon her return to States, she learned guitar, both of which helped her as a songwriter.

As the story goes, Celestine was at an open mic in downtown San Antonio when Gordon Raphael, best known for his work producing The Strokes, Regina Spektor and others had discovered her and invited her to record some of her then-more acoustic-based material. In fact, with her acoustic material, Celestine placed highly in the International Songwriting Competition, was nominee in the International Acoustic Music Awards, and as a result she’s had several songs hit the iTunes Charts. (From what I understand, some of her acoustic material will be released on a 3 song EP, produced by Blake Harnage of VERSA sometime next year.)
In the meantime, her debut EP, which is also slated for release sometime next year is a slickly produced collection of crafted pop songs that’s remarkably contemporary; in fact, the EP’s third and latest single “As We Grow Old” manages to be reminiscent of the likes of Little Boots, Chelsea Lankes, Phoebe Ryan and others as it pairs Celestine’s sultry cooing with a bouncy, upbeat production featuring gently cascading synths, skittering drum programming and swirling electronics. But lyrically the song stands out from a crowded field as it openly discusses how difficult it is to be what you think you might want to be when other people are forcing you to be and do things that you’re not — or that you’d hate. But it also suggests that the only way to live is to be unabashedly you because you don’t want to be old and live a life of regrets. Imaging popping in an actual message in between catchy hooks, eh?