All the Latest Music News on Nagamag

Artist shared few words with Nagamag behind this song inspiration:

"I wrote this song during the Texas Freeze last year, when so many people were stuck in their homes, without heat or power, for days. I had a song due for my songwriting group that week, & the subject was something I can't remember, but all I could write about in that moment was what I—& the people around me—were experiencing. This fall I went into the studio with Brian Douglas Phillips in hopes of capturing the song with a live studio feel. I think we accomplished that."

https://emilyshirley.com/
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Emily Shirley’s brand of thoughtful songwriter pop/rock is as finely tuned and brightly colored as the graphic design projects she works on for her day gig. Her latest release, DuoTone, is a genre-bending hybrid of indie-pop melodies woven over thoughtful, grounded lyrics. It represents the full, vibrant sonic image of a writer who has come into her own in the Austin, Texas scene.

A Connecticut native, Emily was steeped in church choir, musical theater, and Debbie Gibson at a young age. Classically trained on piano and a veteran of high school and college semi-pro acapella choirs, she found her place as a vocalist and writer when she joined the Boston based band Amun Ra as the lead singer, touring their soulful pop songwriting with breakbeats and electronica to clubs across the Northeast. They released 2 full length albums in her 6 years with them.

In 2006, Emily moved to Austin, Texas and realigned her musical existence. Starting over in a new city without a band as well as juggling her graphic design business and being a mom, “I had to carve out my solo space and find a way to let music work with my lifestyle,” she notes. She fell in love with the piano again and began writing and gigging; she released her EP Tiny Truths in 2010, produced by Daniel Barrett (Ruthie Foster, Susan Gibson). Reviewsic described the EP’s sound as “executed with the same old-meets-new-quirkiness of Feist.” In 2013 she found her band again, joining Austin favorite The Belle Sounds on piano, synth, and vocals. She's toured Texas and the West Coast with The Belle Sounds, performing in esteemed venues like Strange Brew in Austin and The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

Most recently, Emily released a series of singles that culminated in the release of her 2015 EP DuoTone, now available as a limited edition disc. Featuring songs produced by Mark Hallman (Carole King, Ani DiFranco) and Daniel Barrett, DuoTone displays Emily's ability to illuminate scenes and landscapes through sound. "Suffering Soul" has a sonic palette that drops the listener in the middle of the desert, parched and desperate, searching for salvation. “Starstruck” brings a swinging piano and brassy horns to themes of nostalgia for more innocent artistic times, and hints to her list of musical influences like Nellie McKay and Rufus Wainwright. Emily Shirley’s artistic point of view and skillful sonic experimentation make for a varied and stirring repertoire. “My formative years are still happening,” she jokes when describing her musical life, the honest response of a musician and creator always on the lookout for the next spark.

https://linktr.ee/rockerscontrol

In the beginning of the 2000s, São Paulo city saw the ebullition of emblematic nights dedicated to dub, a style created in Jamaica in the 1970s, based on sound effects and experiments, and which has unfolded worldwide as a reference and element in many other musical genres.

https://www.facebook.com/rockerscontrol/

The parties at Dubversion Sound System, which until today, two decades later, are still in full swing and are a reference in style, received Rockers Control, a band that performed and received live interventions by DJ Yellow P.

https://www.instagram.com/rockerscontrol/

After years since the group's first album, “Jacuípe Sessions”, released in 2008, Rockers Control - trio formed by musicians and music producers Bruno Buarque - drums (Criolo, Tatá Aeroplano, Jorge dü Peixe, Estúdio Minduca), Cris Scabello - guitar and voice (Bixiga 70 and Estúdio Traquitana), and MAU - bass (Anelis Assumpção, Karina Buhr, Vitoriano e Seu Conjunto, Comunsbalidos) - released a new album after more than a decade. “Presenting To You - Rockers Control presents Cristopher Dilovah” on November 12th.

The album comes with 10 new tracks, the result of years of work playing together and brings participations such Victor Rice.

“During the pandemic, we revisited the Rockers' collection, which is huge, with older sounds, from our beginnings, as well as many newer ones. While the world was turned upside down, we searched for the effective and affective remedy of music. We've done a singles releases and we've paved the way for 'Presenting To You',” explains Cris Scabello, who on Rockers is Cristopher Dilovah.

“At a time such we live in, the important thing is to walk, together, in the power of sound, existing, resisting and insisting”, emphasizes Rockers Control.

In 2018 Lars Bygdén, one of Sweden’s most influential singer/songwriters, released the bleak masterpiece Dark Companion. An album revolving around his wife’s sickness and death.

https://larsbygden.bandcamp.com/

His new album picks up where the previous one ended. This, the opening track, finds Lars and his daughter at the vicar picking out symbols for the stone. Lars chose a bird, the daughter a star. A dark gospel about love and loss. Amazing arrangement in 60s style, topped with gripping vocals and lyrics.

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The Americana roots duo that would evolve to become “The Ghosts of Liberty” got its start long before Emma and Tyler Millard knew they would be eventually be married.

When Tyler was 21 sitting in a doctor’s office after having noticed that his peripheral vision had been giving him some trouble during a college game of ultimate frisbee, he received some bad news from his doctor who said, “You’re slowly going blind. You have RP. There’s no known cure.”

Tyler did not let his diagnosis slow him down. He picked up a guitar for the first time and began playing obsessively. His career in teaching was ended with his blindness. He put together a local blues-rock band in his small North Carolina town, and began playing full-time. Over the next several years, his musical chops got sharper as his vision slowly but surely continued to betray him. Tyler exclaimed, “It felt like a race against time!”

Emma taught herself how to wail and belt just like all the country greats as a little girl growing up in the heart of Texas. As life went on, from church choir to classical opera, musicals, and fronting an alternative pop-rock band, she saw a lot of different audiences for a lot of different reasons, but one thing remained the same, which is how much she loved singing for every one of them. Emma reflected on one of her deepest challenges, “Throughout my lifelong struggle with depression, and for all of life’s celebrations, music is my source of purpose."

Fast forward to 2014, Emma met Tyler for the first time at a “jam session”, and they immediately hit it off as friends. She began opening up for his band at local gigs. Meanwhile, she spent hours offstage with him writing and bonding over late night milkshakes at rural dive bar booths. Over time this bonding led to the realization that they make the other better in both life and music. Tyler’s steady, funny, and loving personality gave Emma the confidence to believe in herself and to continue chasing her passion. Emma’s spontaneous and sentimental nature provided Tyler with a ceaseless supply of inspiration and motivation. In 2018, under a giant oak tree, they made their union official in a beautiful late summer ceremony.

In January of 2020, six years after they met and hundreds of live shows later, “The Ghosts of Liberty,” their first child, is officially born. The duo worked with a three time Grammy nominated composer/producer to create a series of singles, one of which is "Daddy's Daughter." You will find the song on all streaming platforms.

https://kawakawamusic.bandcamp.com/
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Hailing from Bristol, and having formed at the beginning of 2020 just before Covid pop-trio KOKO sure didn’t have the most promising head start in terms of timings, however though beat the odds and had great success, media coverage and DSP support (a.o. numerous NMF playlists) with their debut EP. Stepping up the game and putting an even more pop-oriented twist on their alt-pop smasher sound spiced with indie & delivered with hip hop swagger taken from The Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar, KOKO signed with Humming Records in 2021.

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"Break my own heart then put it back... Sorry for the whiplash" muses new single 'Whiplash' from Southern Californian singer/songwriter, Alexa Cappelli - a super upbeat / fun take on the insecurities, indecisiveness + back and forth of dating in the digital age.

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https://www.instagram.com/mauricejamesmusic

Maurice James is a singer songwriter based in Los Angeles, CA. Son of a Baptist pastor on the West Side of Chicago, he spent much of his childhood in a church sanctuary with nothing but his inner voice and a baby grand to keep him company. Out of his time with that piano, his unique, soulful sound was birthed.

In his piano driven debut EP, "Rare View", released in 2020, Maurice introduced his genre bending style to the world, blending expressive vocals with honest lyricism.

He believes that music has the power to unite in times of discord and to heal in times of struggle, and aims to harness that power in all that he creates.

Artist shared few words behind inspiration:

“This one I wrote when I was a January in a small cottage in the isle of Skye. The power went out during a major wind storm and I went to stand out in it for a while – the kind of wind that you can lean right back into. I began to think of it as a sort of over-protective parent, an entity that’s always looking out for you and watching your every move. Since it was after Christmastime, the Christmas Carol was also in my head, and I got an image of Jacob Marley coming in all of his chains to warn about how we wear the chains we forge in life; thoughts of greed, arrogance, selfishness came to mind, and I kept thinking of the wind being this sort of character, always reminding us to be our best selves.”

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Artist shared a story behind this song:

"The past year something in me sort of snapped. I’m not sure if it was from the intensity of the pandemic, or the move back to my home state of California and reconnecting to my roots. But a lot of my beliefs about myself and the world have changed drastically.

I always lived with this anxiety like something horrible was just around the corner, but I started asking myself “What if it turns out better than you imagined?” Honestly, I really don’t know if it will! And for the first time in my life I feel so content with not knowing. It’s freeing- I wanted to weave all of it into a song.

And it was one of those days in the studio that felt electric. Daniel Pashman (producer) and I were paired to work together for the very first time and just really hit it off. I remember laughing the whole time, so happy about the melodies and sounds we were playing with.

Since then, “On My Way Up” has become such a familiar friend to me—on hard days, it literally helped me get out of bed and remember all of those realizations from the last year. Like I would blast it in my headphones and just laugh and dance around while making my morning tea. I hope listeners get to feel that too."

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