Author: l3gaci
“Hear My Call” ….Jill Scott
Through your most difficult times, when people are mourning, we look for some answers to our troubles. And the moment you think your at your worst, something, someone, somehow, a sense of inspiration comes through that changes everything. Newtown Conn. , this is for you!
ZEE AVI “Concrete Wall”
For 25-year-old Malaysian singer/songwriter Zee Avi, “Swell Window” is the gorgeous track that started the journey and also the opening track of her second album, ghostbird. “It’s a song about seizing the moment,” she says, “and for me, a new direction and a new voice came and stayed.”
In the two years since her self-titled debut was joint-released on Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records and Ian Montone’s Monotone Label, Avi’s very free spirit has wandered from major music festivals (SXSW, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo) to huge tours (Lilith Fair) back to her homeland of Sarawak, Borneo Island, where she recently picked up an International Youth Icon Award. For a little perspective, just four years ago, Avi was a former art student in Kuala Lumpur who posted a song on YouTube to catch up with a friend and was quite surprised to find herself the toast of the Internet when thousands of strangers discovered her effortlessly stunning voice. Literal overnight success can easily poison young minds, but Avi is no ordinary mind — while critics were comparing her chilled-out, jazzy, ukulele-based songs to Billie Holiday and Cat Power she was continuing to make visual art and remaining her buoyant, whimsical self. “I’m 25 going on 12 and a half on a good day,” she laughs, flipping through a notebook filled with colorful drawings and lengthy notes.
Avi started writing ghostbird in her Brooklyn kitchen last summer, but followed the wind to the balmy waters of the Florida Everglades where she found endless musings, “with absolute silence and calmness.” In March, she took her fresh batch of tunes to Johnson’s Solar Powered Plastic Plant studios and got down to business with producer Mario Caldato, Jr., best known for his work with the Beastie Boys and beloved Brazilian artists like Bebel Gilberto. It only took two weeks for them to lay down the 11 tracks on Ghostbird (it means “Burung Hantu” which means owl in Avi’s native language), including the closing number on the album, “Stay In The Clouds,” a new addition that was written on the last day of recording.
This album lead Avi to new ideas. “Siboh Kitak Nangis” which translates to “Don’t You Cry,” is the first song in Avi’s dialect on an international album and the poppy groove of “The Book of Morris Johnson” is the first time she has written new music to accompany someone else’s words. “Morris Johnson” was inspired by a Floridian folk artist whose paintings of animals and accompanying text about their instinctual lives “capture naiveté and innocence and enthusiasm,” Avi says. After buying a few of his pieces at an art show, Avi called him up and said, “Morris, I’m ready to be your disciple, I’m ready to turn your words into a song.” (Morris was thrilled — his daughter’s a huge fan.)
The track “Anchor” is one of the handful of songs that made the album from Avi’s New York writing sessions and also what Zee refers to as a “premonition track,” and another NYC track, “Concrete Wall,” is a striking a cappella that features contributions from beloved turntable god Cut Chemist. And yes, she is well aware June has 30 days rather than 31 (the song “31 Days” was inspired by a couch-surfing friend who lamented, ” ‘I was homeless for 31 days in June.’ “) Every song has a different mood, every song is a different voice, every song is a different story,” Avi explains. But the idea of the ghostbird unites the album, and Avi has tucked an owl call into a few tracks on the disc, “So it’s a little scavenger hunt when you listen to it.”
After the album arrives on August 30th, 2011 Avi is itching to get back on tour and show off her live skills. “I want people to feel like they’re being hugged,” she says of the soothingly beautiful ghostbird. “I think this is my swell window right now.”
Pop OFF & JAE JIN
Darryl Stephens …….Apostasy
Who needs to talk about their personal life, when you can feel it in their music! The rhythmic beats will excite your senses to explore a Apostasy, the falling away! We all have that moment when we need to walk away from someone, or something, because it no longer fulfill our needs. That very moment, and it’s all over……and your Free! APOSTASY
Sebastian Mikael
While many artists spend a lifetime chasing “international status,” 24-year-old classically trained singer-songwriter-musician Sebastian Mikael is already starting his career where others can only hope to finish. Born in Sweden to a Swedish father and Ethiopian mother, Sebastian Mikael—formerly known as De-Lor (which is French for “of gold”)—was raised in a diverse household that was enriched by music. While no one in his family ever made music professionally, Sebastian Mikael inherited his passion for music from his father and the sounds he grew up listening to inspired him to find out what was going on behind the music.
What started off as a childhood hobby soon snowballed into an adolescent obsession that led to him picking up the guitar and mimicking the sounds he heard on the radio. “I became interested in knowing exactly what the musicians were doing and how they got their sounds,” says Sebastian Mikael, who started off playing his favorite songs by Marvin Gaye, Guns N’ Roses, Wyclef Jean, Akon and Usher.
Before long, Sebastian Mikael’s newfound passion led him to clocking long hours at Swedish recording studios, singing hooks for rappers and teaming up with a local producer to form a production team. But while the duo’s initial recordings generated a lot of buzz online, Sebastian Mikael was eager to strike out on his own. “I saw the initial potential of the work we were doing,” he says, “but I wasn’t getting a shot at doing my own songs. Plus, they are not as open-minded about music in Sweden as they are in the U.S.”
Feeling a glass ceiling approaching in Sweden, Sebastian Mikael set his sights on America and enrolled at California’s Musicians Institute to study audio engineering in 2008. After living in California for two years, he relocated to Boston in 2010 to continue studying at Berklee College of Music. In late 2011, while a student at Berklee, Sebastian Mikael released his first mixtape, J’Adore, which received rave reviews from his steadily growing fan base. His breakthrough video single, “Beautiful Life,” where he sings an inspiring message about appreciating life, captures the essence of Sebastian Mikael’s music as a whole. “My lyrical content is not always about love, but what we go through and feel in life,” he says. “I like to put hope in my music. Stuff that makes you feel good musically and lyrically.”
Months after the release of J’Adore, Sebastian Mikael’s YouTube video for “Beautiful Life” caught the attention of music industry veteran Sylvia Rhone, who swiftly signed him to her new joint venture label with Epic Records in the spring of 2012. Now in the studio working on his hotly anticipated forthcoming full-length debut album, Sebastian Mikael has been busy collaborating with some of the finest producers and songwriters in the business, including Jim Jonsin, Rico Love, Benny Blanco, Salaam Remi¸ Naughty Boy, Mike Posner and the Underdogs.
With just a handful of years experience as a musician, Sebastian Mikael is already skilled at meshing elements of rock, R&B, pop and electronic music into one cohesive package, held together by his unique acoustic guitar playing. “I feel like my music truly has something to say,” he says. “When people hear my music, I want them to relate. The way my music makes me feel inside is usually the same way people feel when they hear it.”
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