This LITM Pop Picks brings you colourful tunes and thrilling harmonies featuring Ooberfuse and Charlie Rishimawi, Steam Lizard, Alexia Vegas, Stella Matteoni, and John Lebanon!.
1. Ooberfuse ft Charlie Rishmawi- To Love To Peace Today
This London+Palestinian combination of alt pop and ethnic fusion perfectly illustrates how music crosses boundaries and unites people. With themes of peace and humanity, the song comes at a perfect time- an end-of-the-year reminder about unity and kinship. The track itself comprises of varying beats and rhythms within the arrangement, smooth, echoing vocals, and a beautiful interlocking of the acoustic guitar and a traditional oud, creating a hybrid sound of two distinct cultures. The music is slow and lilting and moves to a high-octane, celebratory vibe, and all this makes for a unique listening experience and a great anthem of peace.
2. Steam Lizard – Sloth Mode On (Slothing it Song)
If you’re looking for a song to tame your anxiety, Steam Lizard has the perfect one for you. The track paints the picture of an afternoon siesta on a hammock, with its leisurely pacing and mellow composition. The track layers some warm vocals over soft, tooting instruments, dissonant, smoky puffs, and thinner tingly textures, creating an almost real-life ‘slow-mo’ atmosphere. Lyrically, the song pulls you in with the singer’s descriptions of his ideal ‘sloth mode’ schedule ,tempting the listener to join in on the vibe and take things one long step at a time.
3. Alexia Vegas- Kiss Me Like You’ll Really Miss Me
In complete contrast to the previous track, we have Alexia Vegas’s latest fast-paced Electronic house hit, ‘Kiss Me Like You’ll Really Miss Me’. The vocals are a clear standout with its glistening glass-like effect, laying on top of a quick-paced, yet hypnotic layering of instrumentation, while the beats bring in the overall tracks energy and smooth flow. The interlude brings in an interesting mix of compressed vocals to bring in more tension towards the ending, and the vocal harmonies bring in a euphoric blend, and add to the song’s overall swirl of simmering sonics.
4. Stella Matteoni- Red Flags
Stella Matteoni steals with her latest track ‘Red Flags’, carving a genre of her own. The song is a cocktail of tingling soundscapes and textures, as the mix brings in a variety of dots and long dashes of notes, layered on top of smooth, zesty instrumentation. To add to the song’s quirky vibe, the singer has used all kinds of fun vocal techniques with vibrato, harmonization, riffs, a few electronic modulations, and even a few changes of timbre from buttery to hazy to pillowy. The jazzy multitude of sounds blends seamlessly, making for an overall fun, catchy, and cerebral listening experience.
5. John Lebanon- Disco Boi Beirut
‘Disco Boi Beirut’ bridges the cultural gap between Beirut to New York through music. A reimagining of the artist’s own ‘Disco Boi’, the track invokes a euphoric feeling of dreamy spirals and swirling notes with its arrangement and hazy vocals. The vocals gently surface, bobbing up and down from the undercurrent of the instrumentation, but gently float along with the music, while the interlude section further draws the listener in. The Arabic- English duality by John Lebanon and featured artist Isabelle Malhame, is a standout and it works well even from a soundscape point of view, as it has a wispy flowy effect complementing the overall score.
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