South Korean singer-songwriter / musician ID:EARTH (아이디얼스) returns with ‘Home’, a hazy, pared-down indie-pop gem, following on from her recent track ‘Betting’ feat Korean rapper Dbo.
Lifted from the forthcoming 4-track EP ‘Panorama’ due later this year, ‘Home‘ forms part of the EP’s connected series, exploring polarising musings on society and human experiences. Sung in both English and Hangul (한글) ID:EARTH’s ethereal vocals flit seamlessly over smooth lo-fi meditative melodies.
She explains: “Home is a song written thinking about my family. I want to say that family is always beside you, whenever wherever. There’s a theme to the artwork. The first single ‘Betting’ shows two Queens that represents one pair of two cards with the same number, and two Queens and 222 from ‘Home’s artwork combines to become a full house. That’s the meaning of this song. The number 222 is 2022 and February 22nd is my birthday. A sculpture in a human mask. Inside that, it’s being filled with souls, emotions, memories and experiences. Sometimes we need to knock on the door and look before time passes and it overflows and the statues are scattered. The owner who wants to protect the house will be waiting for us. Always remember that I hold the key to ‘my home’. I dedicate this song to the people I love and who love me.”
ID:Earth, which means “the identity of the Earth,” hails from Seoul, South Korea and made her debut in 2019 with ‘Egypt’, an experimental, cross genre pop tune which garnered immediate attention. The next single ‘Olympus’ followed swiftly and led to her acclaimed debut album [BE] in 2020. ID:EARTH’s lyrics encapsulates our relationship with the earth and human civilisation. “My music is made to be connected and pieced together like a puzzle. The lyrics are anecdotes and stories about history, myths and philosophies, it also looks into the lives of people and contains their experiences.”
ID:EARTH’s music has been featured in various Korean movies and television series and she continues to push the boundaries with her unique inimitable style in 2022.
Image credit: Ryan Blackwell & Nastassia Winge – Beyond Photography
Have you ever felt yourself standing at the edge of calm and collected? It could be anything that triggers it, like your partner deciding to call it quits. Or maybe you just lost your job or even your beloved sentimental possessions being stolen. Musician Ilja Alexanderprovides a solace for all the bruised souls with his latest meditative and reflective work Nature via Green Monk Records which talks about healing and growth amidst adversity.
The musician elaborates on how dear this particular EP means to him: “We breathe and live by all that Nature gives us. We reach to her for calmness and peace. The message of this song is to remind everyone how precious Nature is and to restore harmony and balance in today’s world. It’s a song about gratitude and love. This song is also about finding individual harmony and balance, peace of mind. I found inspiration for the songs on this EP while processing some profound childhood traumas. Nature, as well as my previously released single Butterfly, are about self-awakening and guidance.”
We can all take a leaf of wisdom from this latest EP that takes an honest look at humanity and how we can fix it if we start looking inward. A sweet-sounding and light production leave to access the heartfelt lyrical content that the musician shares freely. Let your mind wander into a dreamlike pop landscape with this new EP.
French indie-pop artist Dude Low released his jazz-inspired single “Bottle”. The new single sharply contrasts the artist’s previous release, “Amnesia,” which heavily leaned into synth-pop elements. However, a steady trait throughout Dude Low’s music is an undeniable softness of the chords and an incredible sense of depth through jazz influences.
“Bottle” touches on his infatuation with parties – which commonly include bottles of liquor – that brought him into a delusional lifestyle. Dude Low talks about the addictiveness of partying, “Why paradise is always a mirage,” he sings. “Once you taste it, you’re stuck in it.” The song calls attention to how drinking, partying or doing drugs create illusions for people searching for a vice. Like in many of his songs, Dude Low effortlessly merges serious discussions with wildly interesting soundscapes.
Dude Low, the modern proletarian, is back for 10 tracks with rich sounds that explore his wandering Egotrip. From his headquarters (Rennes), he calls for a journey after a year of solitary therapy, far from his tribe: humans. Neither too political nor too fatalistic, Dude Low spits on what annoys him without claiming to know the solution. Through beats that rub up against hip hop, the artist wants to be uncompromising by creating his own artisanal mix ready to swing his left hook in the unbearable gloom of routine, or by enhancing it with a melancholic caress. Who said romance was dead? Not Dude Low. Life is like a Wes Anderson movie, it all depends on how you perceive it. Gathering momentum from a run of shows in France, Dude Low has wrapped up recording sessions in anticipation of his upcoming album Ego Tripon Fogwood Records due to be released April 2022.
Now, if you’ve been following RCRD LBL for the past year, chances are you would have heard about the Chinese-British songstress Fifi Rong and her fantastical build towards releasing her latest crowd-funded album, There Is A Funeral In My Heart, For Every Man I Loved. The singer first arrived on our radar in February 2021 with the release of ‘Another Me’ and the artistic music video that accompanied it. In the nearly full year to follow, we saw Fifi Rong investigate the world of live performance, become a forerunner in the NFT community and launch the impressively successful crowd-funding campaign that helped her give back to her followers and collaborators alike.
It seemed only fitting to round off the year with Fifi Rong as we explore her mind, creative process and plans for the future. Find it all in the exclusive interview below.
Tell us about your first memory of music and how it inspired you
I was 4 watching this TV show about pianists and I developed this aching desire toward it and begged my parents to get me a piano.
In your biog, you mentioned how you’ve struggled to reconcile the two different sides of society (Western and Eastern). Do you feel you were able to bring the two together in your latest album?
Yes absolutely. It’s effortless now, and I can dial to any side as I wish.
There Is A Funeral In My Heart, For Every Man I Loved was crowd-funded, reaching the goal before the campaign ended. Tell us how you feel about this success and what you envision the next step to be
I’m very proud and loved. We reached the goal 2 weeks before the end of the campaign and ended at 164% crossed Indiegogo and my website’s crowdfunding period. This is proof of the ‘1000 true fan’ theory of how modern artists can have true creative freedom and full support from a relatively small number of true supporters instead of millions of distant listeners/fans. Going forward, I will be taking my connection with my real supporters to web3, which is an environment where this culture I have developed in my community can really thrive.
What is your favourite aspect of your video for ‘Out Of Clock’? What makes it stand out from the rest?
I speak in Chinese and English in the monologue at the intro, and tell the story of Why There Is A Funeral In My Heart in Chinese on one of the stereo fields, whereas I kept repeating the Album title in the other stereo field. It sums up the album really, and the production style is my favourite type in all my productions too: ‘passive aggressive’. Also, the chorus really spells out the general emotional signature of the entire album. ‘My heart is running out of love, for anyone, to stay’… after every funeral I gave to every single love affair. It’s a memoir of love after all.
The world of NFTs is quickly evolving, with you as one of the forerunners in the community. Tell us why you believe this new digital world is so important?
Cryptocurrency and NFT is a new technology, a disruptive one. Technology is a one way street, and NFT as a technology will take over the whole world before everyone realises it. It creates a better, fairer world and financial system, a win-win situation for creators, fans, and collectors, and adds much more utility and ownership to the relations between them.
Metaverse is the immediate future that will integrate with most of our lives and NFT is the builder block of this meta universe we are moving into.
Where is a good starting point for an artist looking to enter the NFT game? What tips would you give to a newcomer?
Web3 is powered by people and communities and the key is self governance, so education and connection with others in the community is the first and foremost aspect of longevity in NFT. So I’d recommend finding us on twitter, we have community space to educate and connect all the time around the week/cock. My twitter is @fifirong so follow me and connect on my daily onboarding show and I’ll set them up.
Tell us about your latest album. Which track shouldn’t fans sleep on and why?
‘I’m Enough’ has been talked about a lot from the feedback so far. I didn’t expect that, as I didn’t get special ‘love’ earlier during the making of the album from my peers, so I was sleeping on it. But now the album is out, people are loving it, and felt that it should have been a single as well. But then, the traditional industry may think there’s no single in my album, whereas my true supporters think every song is a single. Guess whose view I care more about?:)
