Rising Star 84 - Textures That Talk

Rising Star 84 opens like a whispered secret in a crowded room—an insistence that music is not just sound, but presence. If Rising Star 83 explored expansion through collision, Rising Star 84 is about convergence: artists who have walked fractured paths now meet in a shared gravity, their creative worlds orbiting one another before coalescing into something neither could have imagined alone. It’s the point where individuality becomes resonance, and resonance becomes revolution.

In this session, textures talk. A bassline hums like memory, hesitant yet persistent; a vocal trembles on the edge of confession and defiance. Electronic pulses weave through acoustic warmth, creating spaces that feel both intimate and infinite. One producer abandons the safety of symmetry, sculpting chaos into rhythm so tangible you could trace it with your fingertips. A songwriter folds grief into humor, vulnerability into triumph, crafting lyrics that feel like a handshake across time and experience.

The journeys here are human in their specificity yet universal in their reach. One artist discovered their voice in the quiet corners of a city library, letting the world drift past while crafting melodies that understood patience and observation. Another found creation in a storm—literally, with rain tapping against studio windows as a drum, teaching that rhythm can emerge from unpredictability. Each story bends expectations, showing that the route to innovation is rarely straight, often messy, and infinitely rewarding.

Rising Star 84 doesn’t demand you lean in with spectacle; it asks you to listen with presence. The dissonances hold as much weight as the harmonies, and joy is often hidden in imperfection. This is music that converses—between artist and listener, between experience and interpretation, between what was and what could be.

Here, audacity is quiet but unwavering. Originality isn’t declared; it surfaces naturally from curiosity and risk. The artists of Rising Star 84 are not following a path—they are charting new territories, crafting frequencies that linger in the mind, provoke reflection, and invite the listener to feel alongside them.

Rising Star 84 is not just a session. It’s a calling: step into the intersections, honor the imperfections, and witness music in its raw, unguarded, transformative humanity.

"January Blue's 'Tidal Wave': The Sound of Surrender"

January Blue didn’t just show up with a debut single—she arrived with a fully realized sound. “Tidal Wave” doesn’t feel like someone testing the waters; it feels like the start of something confident and deliberate. The track is lush, cinematic, and hypnotic, with those kind of vocals that pull you in before you’ve even noticed how deep you’ve gone. The groove locks you down, the synths shimmer, and suddenly you’re in her orbit, unsure if you’re floating or falling.

What makes it even more striking is that this almost didn’t happen. For years, January Blue stepped away from music altogether. No songwriting, no recording—just silence where there used to be melody. Then she met Toby Lloyd, a producer who not only became her creative partner but also nudged her back toward the guitar, back into her voice. You can hear his fingerprints all over “Tidal Wave,” but it’s more than production polish—it’s the sound of someone believing in you enough to drag your songs out of hiding.

The single was born in Tiny Triumph Recordings, Lloyd’s rooftop studio in Wellington. The space has a reputation for nurturing some of New Zealand’s most promising artists, but for January Blue, it wasn’t about history or prestige. It was personal. Recording in the same room as her partner gave the whole process a strange mix of vulnerability and safety—like singing secrets into a mic and knowing the only person who could really hear them first was someone she trusted.

Musically, you can draw a direct line to acts like Men I Trust, The Marías, and Kali Uchis—artists who make songs that sound like they could either soundtrack your 3 a.m. insomnia or your sun-drenched Sunday drive. There’s also a psychedelic edge that nods toward Tame Impala, especially in the way the track swells and recedes, always a little slippery, like trying to catch light on water. But what I hear most is her ability to make vulnerability feel spacious, not claustrophobic. That’s rare.

The lyrics circle around surrender—what it feels like to let go when the tide is too strong. It’s not a love song in the obvious sense, but it is about trust. About the terrifying beauty of giving in to forces bigger than yourself. Listening, I thought about how so many debuts are overstuffed, crammed with proof that the artist has ideas. “Tidal Wave” doesn’t do that. It’s restrained, intentional. She leaves space. And that space is what keeps you replaying it, because you’re filling it with your own stuff.

Of course, the contradiction here is that January Blue’s music feels effortless, but the story behind it is anything but. It took years away, self-doubt, and then the right collaborator at the right time. That mix—hesitation and boldness, intimacy and expansiveness—shows up in every corner of the track. It’s the kind of complexity that makes you want to root for an artist, because you can sense the stakes.

So where does this go next? Hard to say, but if “Tidal Wave” is any indication, January Blue isn’t interested in small ripples. She’s building a sound that’s equal parts groove, mood, and emotion—something you don’t just listen to but sink into. And honestly, after spending some time with this debut, I’m ready for the undertow.

"SonicNeuron's 'Blurred Borders': Where Human Curation Meets Machine Creation"

When Blurred Borders dropped on July 1, 2025, it felt less like a debut album and more like a statement of intent. Created by SonicNeuron—the creative partnership of Danny and Jason Williams—the project challenges conventional notions of authorship and collaboration. Built almost entirely with generative AI tools, the record doesn’t arrive with fanfare about algorithms. Instead, it asks a quieter but more striking question: what happens when technology becomes a co-writer in human stories?

The album spans six tracks, each paired with its own AI-generated video. This dual release blurs lines between music and visual art, offering a complete sensory experience rather than a simple playlist. Danny, working as a self-described “Prompt Engineer,” and Jason, serving as Creative Director, approached the process with unusual restraint. Rather than rewriting or over-manipulating the AI’s output, they curated, trimmed, and applied subtle edits—allowing the machine to surprise them while still maintaining artistic direction.

Among the standout moments is a lullaby sung in Tamil, nestled mid-album. Soft and hypnotic, its accompanying visuals unfold like fragments from an imagined dreamscape, both soothing and slightly disorienting. It captures the project’s central tension: something synthetic producing deeply human emotion. It’s a contradiction that lingers long after the track fades, inviting listeners to reconsider where creativity begins and ends.

The album’s title, Blurred Borders, resonates across several dimensions. SonicNeuron push at the frontier between human and machine creativity, but also across language and genre. English dominates, though Spanish and Tamil lyrics further expand the album’s reach. Musically, it shifts fluidly from ambient electronic atmospheres to more rhythmic, pulse-driven sequences. Under Jason’s guidance, the collection maintains cohesion—experimental without feeling chaotic, exploratory yet deliberately sequenced.

Critics of AI-driven art have raised familiar concerns about authenticity, emotional depth, and the absence of “soul.” But Blurred Borders complicates those arguments. SonicNeuron’s role was never to let AI operate in isolation, but to act as curators and collaborators. Their hand is evident not in heavy intervention but in selective curation—choosing which outputs resonate, and shaping them into something coherent. The resulting album doesn’t sidestep the debate; it adds to it.

Visually, the six videos are as compelling as the audio. Surreal and futuristic, they move between uncanny abstraction and almost tangible familiarity. One English-language track plays out over fragmented cityscapes that rebuild themselves in real time, evoking the disjointed rhythms of memory and modern life. It’s a fitting visual parallel to the album’s thematic interest in fluid identity and technological mediation.

SonicNeuron remain relatively faceless in a music world dominated by personality branding. That anonymity is intentional: the work is positioned as the centerpiece, not the creators themselves. Whether seen as a bold strategy, a quiet rebellion against industry norms, or simply a natural extension of their process, the approach underscores what Blurred Borders represents—a project that refuses easy categorization, but points unmistakably toward a future where the line between imagination and machine is not just blurred, but rewritten.

"Carmina Alegría: Yo Turns Mourning Into Melody"

When Yo talks about Carmina Alegría, it doesn’t sound like an album pitch. It sounds like a confession. Or maybe a ritual. The record was born from loss—on June 1st, 2025, the day Yo’s grandmother passed away. She had once been told she could’ve been a star, stage name already prepared: Carmina Alegría. Life rerouted her dreams. Yo decided to finish the story for her. “She has her own artist profile now,” Yo says, half serious, half amused. There’s something both tender and rebellious about that gesture.

The first song, Volver al aire, is not the kind of single you stumble across on a playlist and keep on for background noise. It asks for your attention, even your silence. Built like a dialogue with Death, it floats between new age, ambient pop, and neoclassical flourishes. Layers of synths swell like a cathedral organ. Then Yo’s soprano voice cuts through—luminous, reverent, almost like a liturgical chant. I caught myself holding my breath the first time I heard it.

What makes Yo different is the refusal to play by genre rules. This is someone who can release Vala one day, win poetry prizes with Poetiza como puedas the next, then circle back with an LP that feels like both a requiem and a rebirth. Yo doesn’t make “crossover art” in the industry sense—it’s not about checking boxes for different audiences. It’s more like each project becomes a mask to try on, a shape-shifting answer to the same question: who is “Yo” anyway?

The contradiction is obvious. The name itself is both self-assertion and self-erasure. “Yo” as in me, I. But also “Yo” as in a mask, a fiction, a wink at the impossibility of fully revealing the self. When I asked about it, Yo just laughed and said, “Some things yes, some no.” That’s the vibe. You don’t get straight lines here. You get spirals.

And yet, beneath all that playful philosophy, there’s a very human core. Carmina Alegría is not abstract; it’s painfully specific. It’s about a grandmother who never got her shot, about a hospital bed and the decision to turn mourning into melody. Even the act of giving her an artist profile online feels like something that belongs more to family folklore than to the industry. It’s both beautiful and slightly odd. That oddness makes it real.

Visually, Yo leans into the theatrical. The project’s artwork looks like a stage set designed for memory—shadows, light beams, something sacred but also fragile. The music videos echo that, half dream, half ceremony. They’re not polished in the streaming-era sense, but that’s the point. They create an atmosphere, a space where listeners can enter and leave changed.

I can’t help thinking that this album is a hinge moment for Yo. Past releases proved versatility, but Carmina Alegría feels heavier, like a line drawn in the sand. It’s not about genre fluidity or literary prizes anymore. It’s about giving shape to loss, about turning a personal wound into something listeners can carry with them. And knowing Yo, this won’t be the final word. It’s a chapter, not a conclusion. The kind that makes you curious about what’s waiting around the bend.

SUGAR SCARS: DARK SPARK – WHITE LIGHT EXPERIENCE

The first thing you notice about Sugar Scars’ new single “Dark Charm” is how it doesn’t give you time to think. It just pulls you in, no questions asked. The track opens with this hypnotic pulse—half dancefloor, half fever dream—that feels like stumbling into a late-night set you weren’t supposed to find. The beat is steady, almost stubborn, but what floats above it is slippery: vocals that sound both haunted and strangely comforting.

Sugar Scars aren’t newcomers to this kind of alchemy. Their last album, Rhythmic Body Reflexes, turned a lot of heads in 2024 with its mash of shoegaze haze, indie-dance grooves, and psychedelic electronics. Critics threw around the big words—“genre-defying,” “boundary-breaking”—but what actually sticks is how personal it feels. You can tell it’s two people—multi-instrumentalists split between El Paso and Juárez—constantly clashing, colliding, and then somehow finding middle ground that shouldn’t work but does.

“Dark Charm,” dropping September 19, is the lead single for their upcoming sophomore album Dark Spark White Light (due November 21). If the title alone sounds like a paradox, the music doubles down on it. The track feels caught between joy and melancholy, like when you’re dancing in the dark but aware of the shadows at the edge of the room. It’s got that contradiction that makes you lean in closer. Honestly, it’s not something you throw on in the background—it kind of demands you stay with it.

On their Instagram, they jokingly describe themselves as “electronic psychedelic dreamy indie dance shoegaze alternative from El Paso, TX.” It sounds like too many hyphens to work. Yet it does. And now they’ve even added a hint of gothic sensibility into the mix, which explains why “Dark Charm” feels like it could soundtrack both a neon-lit club and a black-and-white art film. That balance—playful but brooding, experimental but catchy—is their sweet spot.

There’s a detail in the production I can’t shake: the percussion. It doesn’t just mark time, it’s almost percussive choreography, like it’s telling your body when to move without asking your brain first. Then there’s the bassline—thick, driving, almost rude in the way it refuses to fade into the background. Add in the vocals, drenched in effects but still strangely human, and you’ve got a song that sounds both massive and intimate at once.

Critics are already lining up their praise. Dulaxi called their music “a transcendent experience.” Bad Wolf Records says they’re “redefining the music scene.” Usually I take that kind of promo-speak with a grain of salt, but with Sugar Scars it actually tracks. There’s something about their music that feels unpolished in the best way—like they’re not chasing a perfect sound, but the kind of feeling that can only come from tension and risk.

What excites me most is that “Dark Charm” is just the beginning. Dark Spark White Light has the weight of a sophomore release—the one that proves if a band can hold their ground after the first wave of buzz. If this single is any sign, Sugar Scars aren’t just holding ground—they’re expanding it, pulling listeners into their strange little world where contradictions don’t need resolving. Sometimes, they just sound better when left tangled.

Storming the Conversation: Thomas O'Shea's "Artificial Intelligence"

When you first press play on Thomas O’Shea’s Artificial "Intelligence", it hits differently—not just because of the beat, but because it feels like someone’s storming into a conversation you didn’t know you were part of. The track is sharp, layered, and, honestly, a little confrontational—but in a good way. Thomas isn’t subtle here. He’s calling out AI in music, in art, and everywhere in between, and he’s doing it with the kind of production that makes it hard not to listen closely.

Thomas’s journey to this moment is an oddly meticulous mix of discipline and curiosity. Piano at six, beats at thirteen, songwriting by fourteen. You get the sense that music wasn’t just a hobby—it was a language he had to speak. By the time he graduated with a degree in audio production and music business from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Thomas had already produced for artists nationwide, co-founded a band, experimented with TikTok-inspired soundscapes, and even worked with Grammy-nominated producers. He’s one of those rare people whose résumé almost overshadows the music itself—but here, thankfully, the music holds its ground.

Artificial "Intelligence" is the fourth single off his upcoming debut album, and it’s pure Thomas in the way it tackles a modern problem head-on. AI-generated content, lazy corporate exploitation, the so-called "dead internet" theory—he doesn’t just nod to it. He digs in. What’s interesting is that the track isn’t just a rant; it’s carefully constructed. Influences like Jon Bellion, Sickick, Finneas, and Skrillex bleed through subtly—the experimental production techniques, vocal textures, and laid-back beats nod to each without ever feeling derivative. There’s personality here, messy and human.

Recording in his home studio in Wisconsin, Thomas approached this song differently than anything he’s done before. Instead of a blueprint, he started with the topic and let the experimentation guide him. Vocal processing went through weird twists, beats collided and recombined, and somehow it all clicked. Listening to it, you can almost hear the trial-and-error, the moments of uncertainty transformed into confidence. It’s a glimpse into an artist thinking out loud.

There’s a contradiction in Thomas that keeps things interesting. He’s meticulous—he’s the guy piling up sounds so precise other artists can visualize them—but he’s also willing to throw caution out the window when it comes to personal expression. Natalie Patrick of EarMilk captured this perfectly: “As a producer first and foremost, O’Shea has always had an ear for detail… But with his solo project, he turns the perspective on its head.” That tension—precision versus rebellion—makes listening feel like eavesdropping on something genuine.

What stands out beyond the technical prowess is the philosophy driving the song. Thomas isn’t just making music to fill a playlist; he’s staking a claim. Art is human, art has purpose, and he’s not shy about calling out what he sees as a shortcut stealing from that purpose. In the context of the album, this track is a manifesto. Other songs touch on love, breakups, dreams—but this one is pointing straight at the world, demanding attention. And somehow, it works without feeling preachy.

As the single rolls on, you can feel Thomas’s next steps forming in the back of your mind. He’s established himself as a global collaborator and technical wizard, but here, he’s also carving out a voice that’s unapologetically his own. There’s forward momentum in the song, in the album, and in his career, and it’s hard not to want to follow along. If anything, Artificial "Intelligence" makes you wonder what he’ll tackle next—and whether he’ll do it with the same boldness, the same attention to detail, and the same refusal to let convenience override creativity.