Groover Playlist 104 | Catching Some Sun

Another collection of great new music from here, there and everywhere.

Mackenzie Leighton heads to the beach, Futur Épisode catch a break, Bôlieu counts on you, Emmanuel Della Torre takes a vacation and more in today’s submissions from Groover, a platform that connects artists with critics like me for a small fee. You can (and should) follow me on Spotify HERE, check out my Top 150 playlist HERE, or listen to it via the widget at the lower right of every page on this site. If you want to be in an upcoming playlist, go HERE. But first, enjoy these sunny tracks:

 


Mackenzie Leighton | Mona By The Seaside

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Indie-Pop.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “In her everyday life, Mackenzie Leighton works as a florist while composing sweet melodies and poetic lyrics. Originally from the U.S., she began her solo career in Paris in 2017. Her sensibility falls in line with the tradition of folk singers like Joni Mitchell, while remaining modern in the style of Phoebe Bridgers or Julia Jacklin. Mackenzie intimately reveals the reality of her expatriate life and pushes the boundaries of her own identity in her EP Fleuriste. Somewhere by the seaside, her friend Mona is waiting for her and we all want to be there with them.”


Futur Épisode | Brise

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Hip-Hop Jazz.
THE TRANSLATED & EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “There are many qualifiers that could be used to describe the style of Futur Épisode: Hip hop, jazzy, electronic, conscious, impertinent, captivating, heady. But this project is above all an opportunity for members Félix and Lukas to share good sounds that make us nod our heads, think and which sometimes plunge us back into our memories.”


Bôlieu | One Two Très Fort

HOME BASE: Canada.
GENRE: Electronica.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “I wanted to make a song that comes from elsewhere … which also explains my video.”


Emmanuel Della Torre | Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Folk.
THE TRANSLATED & EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “Subtle trapper of the soul, he brings us from his inner traces of treasures: Furs of the sweetest memories, fleeces of the worst moments.”


Kalo Kura | Devastated

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Soul/R&B.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “Originally from the Paris region, Kalo Kura finds inspiration in dance and nocturnal R&B atmospheres. Kalo Kura means ‘new moon’ in his mother tongue Bambara, which fits perfectly in their musical universe.”


Iziâme | Encore

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Tip-Hop.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “The universe of Iziâme (singer, dancer, author) is both dark and pop. There are trip-hop atmospheres in the composition and variety in the voice. The lyrics borrow from poetry: love, despair and madness are recurring themes.”


Enoki | Ebb

HOME BASE: Belgium.
GENRE: Electronica.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “Great grooving rhythms, uplifting melodies and a raw, upbeat energy that just keeps giving — welcome to the funk-fuelled world of Enoki, an emerging artist making his mark on the global music scene. His style is bold, daring and impossible to pigeonhole, blurring the line between jazz and neo-dance with anthemic hooks and infectious danceable beats. He’s known for his electrifying performance style and innate ability to really get the party going with his tracks that are simply brimming with raw untamed energy. Enoki’s influences vary wildly as he continues to experiment in a diverse range of sounds.”


Benoît Métral | Better On My Own

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Indie-Folk.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “I just released my new album and I am sending to you the first single, Better On My Own. I started writing this record in the middle of the pandemic after breaking up with the woman I considered the love of my life. Unfortunately, the health crisis brought her to fall for conspiracy theories and she entered a world where I could not follow her or communicate with her anymore. Writing these songs helped me go through this awful situation and I decided I should record an entire album about this story.”


Simadì | Hallucination

HOME BASE: Italy.
GENRE: Electronica.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “I am an Italian composer born in 1992 who has recently self-produced an instrumental album, An Album Full of People. It’s an unusual album full of rock, hip-hop, classical, electronic, metal — because each of us listens to different genres, as if they were many personalities. And this is precisely the point: The title of the album refers to a book by Daniel Keyes which tells the life of Billy Milligan, a boy in the ’70s who had 24 personalities. Fascinated by its story, I wanted to produce an album that best represented what it means to have his condition.”


Adeo | Cage

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Electronica.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “I am a French & Tunisian musician in Paris. I am fond of creation and experimentation, trying to break sound barriers by adding my touch to different genres and styles. Cage is the 11th track of my debut project Summit of Fantasy. It’s a song I started writing on my guitar, before giving it a whole other vision with a synth-based final version, inspired by house and French touch. Cage, like all of my other songs, was made entirely made by me in my room, from the initial melody to the final master.”


Yuman ZavX One | Vu Jamais

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Acoustic Hip-Hop.
THE TRANSLATED & EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “Welcome to Our Universe. Nice to meet you, Encantado, Peace Paz Peace Shaloam Salam on you, your loved ones and your families. Yzx One Honey. Kisses 2 Nuts 2 Coconut.”


Demiurgo | Holographic Ghost Stories

HOME BASE: Italy.
GENRE: Electronica.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE:Demiurgo is an electronic music project started in 1997 by Paolo Di Pierdomenico, now back in production during the 2020 lockdown. Holographic Ghost Stories is the first album distributed worldwide, featuring a renewed visual style and sound design. The album takes an electronic instrumental journey with progressive traits and retrowave and glich sounds, which encompasses many ideas and styles in the arrangement without bordering on the experimental. This track illustrates the narrative approach to composition that characterizes Demiurgo’s music.”


Victorian Death Photos | Radium Girls

HOME BASE: United States.
GENRE: Alt-Rock.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “Houston outfit Victorian Death Photos consists of two anonymous artists: One man, one woman, both shrouded in mystery and known only to us as He and She. The duo have collaborated on many different creative projects in the past, with designs on creating a metal album. Fate had other plans, however, and once they started working together, they ended up zeroing in on a haunted, synthy, post-punk electronic sound, culminating in the EP The Basement Tapes. Radium Girls is based on a true story about female factory workers (around 1920) who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with radium paint. After being told the paint was harmless, the women ingested deadly amounts of radium. The poisoning resulted in tooth, deterioration of their jaws, stillborn babies and death.”


Flore Kafë | Faisons l’Amour

HOME BASE: Canada.
GENRE: Jazz.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE:Flore Kafé is a singer-songwriter of Caribbean / Haitian origin living in Quebec. She sings Creole ballads and world music with sweet Caribbean flavors. Her lyrics, and her sensual and mature voice distinguish her and position her among the best singers in these musical genres.”


Tolvy | Meaningless

HOME BASE: France.
GENRE: Electronica.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE:Violette Tocqueville aka Tolvy, 18 years old, is the new French hope of electronic music. Following in the footsteps of his elders Petit Biscuit, The Avener or Gesaffelstein, Tolvy is a typical artist of her generation — precocious, committed and bluffing creativity. Her songs are simultaneously elegant and racy, orchestral, melodic and powerful, carried by a graphic universe in the preponderant place. Such is the signature of Tolvy‘s rich, punchy and intimate aesthetics.”


N2BLU | Cheatara

HOME BASE: United States.
GENRE: EDM.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE: “Whether we choose to embrace or deny it, there is an animal element inside every person. A creature we can either choose to cage or let run wild and free. That’s what Cheatara is about: Embracing the animal inside, letting your inhibitions go, if only for a moment. As a survivor of trauma and someone with body image issues and insecurities, writing songs like this is a way for me to express my inner desires and aspirations towards who I want to be and hope to become. Cheatara is the name I’ve chosen for my beast: Neither masculine nor feminine, but pure instinct, sexuality, and desire. I feel like we could all use a little Cheatara in our lives sometimes.”


George Katsos | By The Fire

HOME BASE: United States.
GENRE: Rock.
THE EDITED BIO & PRESS RELEASE:George Katsos is an American musician and songwriter. Inspired by 1960s British Invasion and Motown, he writes and publishes original adult contemporary pop. This is the second singlefrom his five-song independently released EP. Originally written in 1985, and about conjuring up interest to joint others ‘down by the fire,’ it finally made it to tape.”


TODAY’S PLAYLIST