Cajsa Siik - Grace Gillespie - Anne Malin
Cajsa Siik hit our radar a few times in 2017 and it's great to have her back with Part 1 of her new album 'NINJŌ PT1' from which we have the first track 'This Is Not Malibu' which is an excellent example of this fabulously crafted collection of music. === Grace Gillespie makes her fourth appearance here this year with 'Hoppers' and once again her creative and melodic music shines beautifully. === Anne Malin has released another song from the forthcoming album 'Waiting Song' this time we have 'Hourglass' where the rich musical backdrop supports heartfelt and superb vocals.
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Cajsa Siik is back in force on the new album "Ninjõ". The album, produced by Siik together with Erik Moberg, shows an artist who once again manages to invent herself by being playful, stripped down and powerful. "Ninjō", which will be released in two parts in 2020/2021, has all the ingredients that characterize an album signed by Cajsa Siik: strong melodies, stripped-down arrangements with precision and lyrics that go straight to the heart.
Cajsa Siik describes one of the singles ”Gate Keeper” like this - ”Gate Keeper is one of the key songs on the album. Like a little backbone.The melody wrote itself and has an ease about it, yet the lyrics is all about tension and resistance. I guess it’s about the art of trying to be there for someone else. Still be there for yourself.To be someone to count on in life and to trust, despite all your destructiveness and flaws. Maybe it’s when you dare to accept the shit that you carry around that you can fully be there and be loved?When you stop ignoring what scares you the most.”
Cajsa Siik released her debut album in 2012 and has since put out 3 studioalbums and 1 EP. Over the years she’s been praised in international media outlets such as Q Magazine, BBC6, Line of Best Fit and Nylon. Her latest album, ”Domino”, took her on a European tour supporting Mitski added to performing her own headline shows in Berlin and London.
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Grace just released a new single from the EP, “Hoppers”. The track takes influences from the folk, alternative and dream-pop traditions capturing the frantic energy of life and contrasting it with the stillness of death, providing a backdrop to her intriguing vocal melodies.
Grace Gillespie is a London-based artist and producer originally from Devon, who spent much of 2017 touring as part of the live line-up for 4AD’s Pixx. In 2019 Grace received PRS’s WMM funding and consequently released her debut EP ‘Pretending,’ which garnered support from the likes of The Line of Best Fit, Clash and Earmilk. This year she has received support from the ‘Help Musicians’ ‘Do it Differently’ award, and is using this to release an EP in the autumn. Some of her notable live shows include supporting James Morrison at Dingwalls, Camden and headlining the folk stage at Tipping Point festival in Newcastle.
Her first two singles found their way onto Spotify’s ‘Fresh Folk’ playlist and received extensive support from Apple Music, appearing on their ‘A-List’ and ‘Best of the Week’ playlists, as well as backing from NME, Crack In The Road and The Wild Honey Pie. Her most recent singles have been playlisted on Spotify’s ‘Fresh Folk’,‘Garden Indie’ & ‘The Lovely Little Playlist’. She has received radio plays from BBC 6 music as well as being a featured artist on BBC Introducing London. Her early demo of ‘Restoration’ saw her tipped to Q Magazine by Newton Faulkner and brought her to the attention of Kaleidoscope, who worked with her to produce her first solo releases in 2018. Her sound takes influences from the folk, alternative and dream-pop traditions, providing a backdrop to her intriguing vocal melodies, shifting harmonies and introspective lyricism.
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Quote from Anne Malin Ringwalt on the track: “Hourglass” started, lyrically, from my sense of detachment from time during the pandemic. When I wrote “somewhere an hourglass stands at night / sand slips by in the moonlight” I was feeling—at the depth of Will and my unemployment—out of control but loving the experience of how dense our days together were, how our days blurred together. I was picturing time as something far away from us. The image of sand inside the hourglass got me thinking about summer, though, and all the ways I’d enjoy my time pre-covid. As I wrote, I moved from this sense of temporal bewilderment to my relationship with Will. We’re getting married late this summer, so when I sing about “last July” I’m singing about Will proposing to me—how time seemed to be opening up for us then, the possibility we felt. How does one enter that sense of possibility from a pandemic? I tried to sing towards that.
Some of you may remember Anne Malin's last record, the atmospheric and intense Fog Area (2018), which I had the honor of working. Since then, the duo has relocated to Nashville from South Bend (they're originally from NC and Kentucky) and, while struggling like the rest of us with the onslaught that has been 2020 (unemployment, pandemic, sickness) has crafted the sublime Waiting Song, a record about what it means for everything to stop, which I'm sharing with you today. This is not a wallowing, though. In their words, they sing "towards a garden they wish to inhabit."
The ghostliness and atmosphere of Fog Area are still present here, as are Anne Malin Ringwalt's distinctive vocals and excellent lyrics (she is also a poet, publishing under the name AM Ringwalt), but there is also a new glow and energy in her partner William Johnson's wonderful instrumental settings (and his increasing use of pedal steel), which add a balancing playfulness and earthiness. Waiting Song stays true to the duo's always idiosyncratic vision while allowing country and pop influences to creep further in and create some truly memorable songs.
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