#MusicMonday Review - February 2022

[osornios]

#MusicMonday is the hashtag I've been using for quite a while to share music recommendations from up-and-coming artists. Always fresh, and always different, trying to look for trends before they become one. You can check January's review for more music.

This month's general theme circles around ballads, with some twists between them. They may sound different, but they can share an emotional vibe in the end. Let's have a listen, with a word from the artists themselves. 🎧

Dinarés – Foliada

Está canción es para dos (vos)
y lleva en ella un sentimiento:
siempre hay lugar para el amor,
pues disfrutemos el momento.

As you may have noticed from our Artists Wanted contests, Spain has a very strong artistic presence, and Dinarés is no exception. Coming from Barcelona, this Latin Ballad came to life just to be played on a special evening:

"The song was created as a present for a couple of friends who got in love and decided to live together. They were divorced from their previous partners and were already more than fifty five years old when they met. The are from Galicia and had planned to celebrate their love in a great party with friends and music (that is what Foliada means in Galician language). Unfortunately COVID arrived and forced them to postpone the Foliada."

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Harry Gustafsson – Incomprendido

Por mas que quiera

No voy a cambiar mi forma de ser

Por nadie

por nadie

Dime si tú cambiarías también

Si fueras igual que yo

Un poco jodido e incomprendido

Dime que hacer en esta situación

Si hacer maleta otra vez

O seguir sufriendo cuando nadie me ve

Not all ballads are the same, and this track coming from Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico, proves it with its Rocky sound. This is how it sounds when you're misunderstood by 'small minded' people:

"My personal experiences are reflected in most of my songs. This one captures the emotional experience of feeling ambivalent about commitment. Especially when forming romantic connections at the expense of freedom and individualism."

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One Dream – I Need a Break Away

I have seen the darkest places

I have ever known

Try to please a thousand faces

Ended up alone.

Can I catch a break

I need to find a new place

I need to break away

Vocal Trance should be make a comeback, and if you want to know what you may have been missing, just have a listen to this energized Polish track which reinvigorates an old genre:

"I was inspired by the old classic trance (Sylver, Ian van Dahl). I also wanted to add something from our times and you can hear what came out from my studio 😀"

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Emmanuel Da Silva – Found My Feet

 

I've got a couple dollars,

some dreams in my luggage,

my life left behind

I've been around the world

trying to find where I belong

If I've found my feet

It's because I've seen the light

There's no turning back from here

For a different take on a Ballad, this Venezuelan artist shows us how it's done Country style:

"It's basically my own story as a migrant. I was forced to flee my home country and had to start over again. I also wanted to inspire people who are struggling and encourage them to never give up on their dreams when starting from scratch."

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Veda Rays – Past Gone

We were grinning and our scars felt so numb hard truths could bend

Worlds were spinning as if time had come undone

We were too young to pretend

There was singing as if angels

had begun to descend

Heard the ringing like the echo of a gun

I was not sleeping then

From Brooklyn, NY, we end this month's selection, with a Post Punk bassy track that will take you on a spellbinding trip through the dark atmosphere of your memories: so complex, yet very elemental. I would turn around today, if I could get back:

"It’s partially autobiographical, the lyrics peppered with personal references, but with the hope that maybe they are delivered in an open-ended enough way that listeners could attach their own stories and meanings. The personal events I’ve based much of it on are not dissimilar to what I get from Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat, though Past Gone sort of ends on a darker note, I suppose.

Another layer was the idea of time and distance distorting the memory of a thing. The image of the tape player in the video speaks to this. I would often think of the scene in David Lynch’s Lost Highway in which Bill Pullman's character is talking to the cops saying something about not liking things taped but instead preferring to remember things in his own way, not necessarily the way they happened."

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Listen to them and much more on the complete Playlist

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See you next month!