Make no mistake, WATERBODIES is far from a solo endeavour. Charlotte Greve enlisted Shahzad Ismaily to produce the record, as well as a vast ensemble of collaborators (including KHORIKOS and the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra) to bring the sound to life. This diversity matches the record’s spirit as outlined above, allowing Greve the space and plasticity to eschew the usual expectations around stylistic consistency in order to accomplish her vision. “With WATERBODIES, I hope to invite the audience to experience the music as if walking through a film,” says Charlotte Greve. “Contrasting scenes unfold one after another, yet remain connected by a common thread.”

With the release set for early this autumn, Greve has shared new single ‘Membranes’. The song considers the multitudes which exist within any one person, and how this array of dimensions is shaped and grown by our immediate surroundings. The bright and curious sound, based around syncopated vocals and drum machine beats, flickers like a disco ball in uneven light, as though with every twist and turn, Greve shows a slightly different face to herself, each just as vivid and shining as the last. “‘Membranes’ is a song about the challenge of carrying several hearts in one breast and wanting to feed them all,” as she continues. “As a kid, I lived like a chameleon, changing my clothing, language and behavior, depending on who I was spending time with and where. The older I grew, the bigger the wish to combine all the different shapes and forms, both in my character as well as in my music. Let them all live alongside each other—the picture of the semi permeable membrane captured this desirable way of living for me.”

Photo by Annika Nagel

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Now Sasha Adrian is back with brand new single ‘wish that i had called u’, which again reimagines the traditional boundaries of a love song to explore a form of relationship not so often explored. Namely the incredibly close bond formed between teenage friends, where every emotion is heightened and you are certain the relationship will continue perpetually. The result uses an upbeat alt-rock tone to capture these feelings, though also countershades this mood with something more wistful and reflective, meaning the result is both an ode to the old days and a nostalgic slice of longing for a time which can never return. “We thought we knew it all, and we had no idea it wouldn’t be like that forever,” Adrian explains. “You can’t help but wonder if you could have held on just a little longer. But at the same time, it’s just an incredible era to look back on for exactly what it was—deeply loving, funny, free, and defining for who we became.”

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After first single ‘Stitch’, a song which “offers a glimpse of the invention and playfulness which underpins the new project,” as we put it in a preview, “weaving a detailed, rhythmic sound over which Carlsson’s spoken vocals play with disarming closeness,” Snake Orange Cake has returned with new track, ‘Hair’. A song about the small joys of life which is suitably subtle in style, its layers of percussion and electronics forming a warm bed over which Carlsson’s vocals play.

The sound might not fully lose the ambiguity which marked leoblu, but here feels not so much ominous and nocturnal as organic, as though the arrangement is its own small biome teeming with mysterious life. A tangle which Snake Orange Cake nurtures and embraces, the vocals stitching into the sound itself to embrace themes of growth and acceptance.

Watch the video, shot at Berlin’s only waterfall, by photographer Pablo Hassmann below:

‘Hair’ is out now and available to stream and download from the Snake Orange Cake Bandcamp page.

Portrait photo by joel ivan thomas

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Liyou has described wanting to make the album since college, though only now possesses the skills to do the idea justice. The upshot of this is a strange duality within the songs. Liyou at 19, longing for parental acceptance as a closested trans person, and Liyou seven years later, wishing a romantic relationship might extend beyond its apparent end. “I feel really affected by this parallel between the love in wanting my parents to accept me for who I am and the love in wanting my partner to stay with me regardless of our circumstances,” they explain. “I always assumed that these two loves were separate but I think recognizing that (for trans people like me, or maybe just for me specifically) these loves have overlap has been simultaneously distressing and comforting.”

With the album’s release fast approaching on Orange Milk Records, Lucy Liyou has shared new single and opener, ’16/8′. A track which introduces both the record’s nuanced pop style and its thematic intention. To document a moment in time in all of its conflicted emotion and tactile experience. “While writing ’16/8′, I remember asking myself what does waiting for someone you love sound like, feel like?” Liyou explains:

Having played classical piano for so long, I couldn’t help but compare this feeling to rests in music—the anticipation building in the silences between notes, phrases, and ideas. I thought about the way some musicians like myself count during rests (e.g., the lyrics: “a kiss and click of the tongue”). I thought about how the growing anticipation in the rests make these silences feel substantive and material (e.g., the lyrics: “metal sheen of 16th’s and 8th’s, plexiglass and gold quarter shapes). And then it’s suddenly my turn to play. And I play what I have practiced for so long:

“please stay.
please stay.
I have so much love to give, please stay.”

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In the months following the album’s release, Sonya dropped several outtakes and b-sides that didn’t quite make the cut on his Soundcloud page. Due to popular demand, he has now bundled these together and released them as a separate collection, titled What’s The Alternative​?​, Demos. Despite the name, the songs are far more polished than the usual demos, forming something of a coda to At What Cost?, again walking the line between easy-going indie pop and emotive ruminations on relationship troubles. What he calls “a short love story on hard break-ups,” ‘Just Pretend You’re Okay’ is a great starting point, a barely two minute track of sweet pop hooks and fraught emotion.

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Their debut EP Infinity Mirror, out now via Future Gods, introduces such ideals by conjuring a vivid environment of its own. The lead single and title track evokes “a world nocturnal and neon-lit,” as we put it, “balancing lush textures and soaring energy to create something both reflective and forward-facing.” A song which considers conditions not as some exercise in nostalgia or longing but motivation to press ahead to pastures new. The rest of the EP follows in this spirit, from the affirming soar of opener ‘Falling’ to ‘Softly’ and its hazy ebb and flow. The latter, written during a period of intense depression and suicidal ideation, finds a comforting vividness punctuated by towering crescendos, as though Bandoquillo is building a sound capable of consoling those in pain and lifting them from the depths of their feelings.

Closer ‘Fix Yourself’ is a striking follow-up and closer. A harsh, caustic track of barrelling momentum, forgoing some of the richness of the previous songs in favour of cathartic release. If its predecessors are about finding safe spaces for healing and progression, then ‘Fix Yourself’ is about the actual act of moving forward. Even if that means razing the things you have been attached to in the past. An act of defiant disowning of all the things which might have once dragged you down in order to live life anew.

Infinity Mirror is out now via Future Gods and available from  the St. Kio Bandcamp page.

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Single ‘numb’ introduced the sensual, cinematic depth of the Julie-Sophie sound, with a glimmering, almost crystalline style which makes, as we put it, “everything feel so fragile and precious and sharp.” The latest single ‘telephone’ follows suit, the closing track of the album which encapsulates everything which has come before. A lush song of love, loneliness and longing, where the brightness on the horizon might be some emergent hope or just the neon smudge of the last place still open so late at night.

Call me up to night
I wanna cry on the telephone
Meet you on the Cowley Road
We’ll share chips on the way home
Call me up to night
I’m staring at my telephone
All dressed up to night with nowhere to go

forgive too slow will be released via Ba Da Bing Records on 26th July. Pre-order now from the Julia-Sophie Bandcamp page.

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Following a series of collaborations with Joel Johnston of Far Caspian, 22° Halo are now releasing a new single with Johnston’s label Tiny Library Records. Titled ‘Bird Sanctuary’, it finds Kennedy doing what he does best, a gentle duet with wife Kate Schneider that sparkles like a gem. He describes the song as one “about listening and not listening,” taking material he wrote around the theme of his wife’s experiences with severe illness. This is referred to only elliptically, with short, sentence-long “verses” that Kennedy delivers in between Schneider singing the chorus. “The thing you try and tell me breaks up with the wind,” he sings at the very beginning. “Say it again.”

But ultimately the heavy stuff is not the lasting feeling. Or at least it doesn’t drag you down in the way you might expect. It’s leavened into something uplifting with that trademark 22° Halo sense of almost naive wonder at the simple things all around us. “Saw the sparrows in alley picking twigs up,” Schneider sings during the chorus. “Are you listening?” It’s as if, at some very basic and intuitive level, Kennedy taps into the stuff that’s really important. Getting lost in the present, side by side with those you love.

‘Bird Sanctuary’ is out now via Tiny Library Records.

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With the record set for release next month, W. Y. Huang has returned with ‘Give It Time’, a brand new single which further introduces the release’s themes and tone. “If pain’s the only constant / then the variable is me,” Huang sings over a hushed folk arrangement, “still I multiply my failures / and subtract my victories.” The opening lines of a song addressed to its own performer, looking to extend the kind of patience and empathy we might offer others to oneself. “This was the first time I wrote a song to myself,” he explains. “There were things I needed to hear and feel to journey through this chapter in my life, and this was my attempt at giving that to myself. Perhaps it might help someone else coping with tough times as well.”

Give it time,
everything will be just fine
everything that’s on your mind
that’s inside out will turn around
just give it time

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“Up on the hillside / dressed in red,” as the track opens, “wasting the sunlight / is only fair / wronging what you can’t right / with me.” The vocals are crooned gently over languid acoustic guitar and strings, though as the track develops so too does its intricacy and drama, the song revealing itself to owe as much to the left-field arrangements of acts like Dirty Projectors as traditional folk. These sensibilities ebb and flow in keeping with the emotional turmoil of the lyrics and strings which lead with a poignant, often playful plasticity. What emerges is a picture of a failing relationship in all of its contradictions. Regret and longing sit side by side, so too conviction and doubt, as well as a steadfast belief in both the misery and wonder of any human connection. “I wanna say,” as Boyd and Norris voice together, “love is such a luminous waste.”

The song comes complete with a video illustrated and animated by Morvern Graham, which you can watch below:

‘The Favourite’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Artwork by Morvern Graham

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