aldn
The internet is real life in 2021, but aldn had made his home in the digital universe years ago. Growing up in Reston, Virginia in the early oughts, aldn was skateboarding and playing video games like most preteen kids when his older brother introduced him to a new toy: an ableton launchpad. Still in the discovery phase of his own musical education, he absorbed everything, and was especially drawn towards artists that were abrasively themselves, whether it be the rave in the sky dubstep of early Skrillex, Linkin Park’s anthemic grunge or A Tribe Called Quest’s inimitably cool and distinguished rhymes. Before Pollen existed and the New Yorker was writing think-pieces on the irrelevance of genre, aldn already felt a kinship for the unending potential that comes with making sounds that nobody else has heard before.
Blood Cultures
Blood Cultures has quietly built a magnetic, complexly-layered persona, whose genre-hopping forays into unique sounds and purposeful commitment to anonymity have always been first-and-foremost concerned with signifying something greater than themself. This objective burns more brightly than ever; with new project, LUNO, they both double down on their alluringly transformational heights while delving much deeper into the raison d'etre for their very existence.
CARR
CARR’s music is the soundtrack to the part of the indie movie when everything comes crashing down the morning after, and knowing you’re going to get up and do it all again. CARR’s straight-faced vocals recall the acerbic wit of early Avril Lavigne mixed with the scream-from-the-rooftops anthems of the All-American Rejects, the product of an era where every lyricist wrote their heart on their sleeve and you knew all the words by heart.
Godford
Godford’s music is nostalgia for the present. Much like the emotionally intricate work of contemporaries such as Bob Moses and Jamie xx, the music Godford creates evokes the romance of late nights, last nights, and the memory of what just came before. The mysterious french artist’s debut record A Non Binary Place captures that lightning in a bottle, peaking feeling where life is never the same since. A place that withstands time, the chance to revisit only by pressing play.
Nilo Blues
Meet Nilo Blues, a 20-year-old poster child of the post-internet, low-attention-span, what’s-the-wifi-pw Generation Z. Growing up in the Toronto art scene, Blues drew influences from his upbringing as a Vietnamese-Chinese Canadian living within a distorted western society. Often feeling internally lost and never accepted, he experienced the struggles of self-concept and trying to live beyond stereotypes. These adversities have fueled his creative chi as Blues comes out of the starting gate full of bravado, poise, and conviction rarely witnessed from a new artist.
Suave Punk
Dreams offer a barely tangible version of reality, like your mind recapturing an image that never existed yet might have been there the whole time: Here and gone unless you do your best to record it. The starkest feeling is one that’s inherently invisible, but is exposed the moment the sun comes up and starts to creep through the blinds. Justin Kim AKA Suave Punk, takes solace in the acceptance that while everything is transient, the weight of these moments affect us more than we know. The first in his family to be born outside of Korea, he developed a Southern twang from growing up in southeastern Florida in a predominately white neighborhood, and stood out in California, where the insularity of other members of his cultural community still kept him at a distance. A classically-trained pianist before teaching himself to play the guitar on YouTube, being able to eschew conforming to any of these rigid structures made finally going off-script that much more rewarding.
Ukiyo
Ukiyo cultivates a dynamic and explosive soundscape, drawing upon distinct hip-hop influences, Soulection-style grooves and chill-pop ─ blending in dizzying synths for good measure. Over the last four years, the artist-producer has released 44 original tracks and remixes, and gained support from such major publications as Nylon, Vice’s NOISEY vertical, PressPlayOK, Indie Shuffle, Clash Music, and Culture Collide, who have praised his many creative endeavors. Prolific artist, songwriter, and producer Pharrell Williams playlisted Ukiyo’s 2016 song “Calling,” on his OTHERtone radio show and playlist, alongside the likes of Maggie Rogers, SZA, and Perfume Genius. The song also landed on Dutch DJ and producer Martin Garrix’s The Martin Garrix Show.
Will Hyde
will hyde found pop music at his lowest point. Initially discovering electronic production in high school, he was propelled into the music industry with the early success of SŸDE, a house music project formed while he and his best friend were just beginning to try their hand at different sounds, often scouring YouTube to find singers to convey the meaning behind the tracks they had produced. But how do you make music for others when you aren’t even sure of yourself? Feeling disconnected from the releases behind his name, Will attempted to find solace in other artists and came up short, struggling with severe anxiety and sidelined without a real purpose. Two years later and just a few footsteps outside of his teens, Will has finally found a place to be at home with himself. This is ‘with u in mind,’ a diary entry of a person whose greatest inspiration has been trusting the process and finally recognizing themselves in the mirror.