Meresha : Artist. Singer. Songwriter. DJ. Producer. Multi instrumentalist

Meresha : Artist. Singer. Songwriter. DJ. Producer. Multi instrumentalist from Poland via Florida. Since 2014 she has been recording and posting to social media.

Meresha reached out to me in October 2016 but I didn't see that DM until I started researching this piece in July 2020 due to the bot that manages my Twitter follower requests. Hemy did the same two years earlier and I didn't see his message until late last year. This hasn't gotten in Meresha's way, as she has grown prolifically in that 3 1⁄2 year space with more than 50 tracks available across BandCamp, SoundCloud, YouTube, Deezer, Spotify, and anywhere else you can imagine. Some of her work is only on one platform while some is accessible almost everywhere. It all reflects an amazing and exponential growth in popularity, creativity, depth, and breadth over that very short time. 

So it is only natural that we start at the very beginning to follow her work through the years. You can track her musical, artistic, and technological development through the different platforms that culminate on a YouTube channel that includes a fan video of one of her crowd favourites. 

Her very first track, Fool Don’t Be, uploaded to her BandCamp in June 2014, shows a remarkable maturity and incredible funkiness! Over the next five years, until April 2020 at least, the acid-house drum/bass Acid Bass mix of New Revolution, the heart-felt realisation that My Love Has Come, the trancy Enter the Dreamland, the dance floor-anthemic Violet Night, and the electro-pop Game of Video were put here in various iterations with other tracks that don't appear anywhere else. This is all Meresha: all the music, all the words, all the instrumentation. The only variation is the producers or engineers for the remixes of songs. 

Turning to her SoundCloud page, and her earliest post check check, a demo/jam featuring self- harmonies over a honky-tonk piano-effect, is followed by Infinitenergy1111. These tracks give the impression that perhaps this was the more experimental channel for her musings. But we then reach Fool Don't Be and August which are anything but experimental; the latter being very similar to where Amanda Easton has been recently. We see more appearances by Violet Night, My Love Has Come, Enter The Dreamland, initial appearances from Lemonade City, Jungle Potion, and Thinkin’ About You, and SoundCloud-only tracks that include hya, beach day vibez, and mor than. 

It's here, also, that we learn of her first two EP releases: 2015's "new revolution" and 2017's "Enter The Dreamland". Artfully illustrated with the lady bedazzled by disco glitter between the back and front panels of her keyboard, lemonade city opens her debut EP with a slow, saltry salute to summer in the city which is all forgotten at the night-club under the doov-doov of new revolution. One of the boys in lemonade city meets the girl from new revolution and their meeting is celebrated in you, while the Summer is celebrated once again in the closer august. “Enter The Dreamland” is another summer soundtrack with august recreated both by the seaside cabins on the cover and the mood of Stardust as the opening track. Jungle Potion dials it right back, as steamily as one would expect conditions in a jungle, but with added brass and, of course, those jungle drums. My stand-out so far. Violet Night makes a reprise, while the set is wrapped aptly by Lights Out, swapping tempos midstream to emulate what happens when the lights are turned off after all this steam! 

But it's on her YouTube channel that Meresha really shines. Not only do we see different versions of earlier releases on the other platforms, we are introduced to Meresha in full flight with the various bands around the world, including Lights Out live in Berlin. There's a mixtape in there as well as Led Zeppelin, Alicia Keys, Queen, Sam Smith, and Paramore covers accompanying audio-only and lyric videos of now-favourites Enter the Dreamland, My Love Has Come, Stardust, and Game of Video among many, many others. 

How, in such a relatively short time, such an artist has blossomed, astounds me. I am only sorry I missed that message 3-1⁄2 years ago to be able to witness all of this as it unfolded. Meresha is my pandemic surprise-package discovery and I only hope to be there when she reaches out again, hopefully to be a part of her next release in one form or another.

Peter G Gleeson: Author at OriginalRock.net

Early in June I got chatting to a writer for OriginalRock.net and, after I found my own back-catalogue from the late 90s/early 00s, I wrote to Original Rock myself to see if he would be able to use my work.

He sent me a couple of records, I wrote them up, and now I can claim to be an author on that site!

My first review was posted yesterday for the fantastic new album by Remo Drive and I'm just listening on BandCamp to the back-catalogue for the second review, Ten Foot Wizard's forthcoming album "Get Out Of Your Mind".

Back in the 1990s I was writing about music I was sent and gigs I was either invited to or just turned up at, and the only outlet was my Geocities platform. When whomever discontinued that platform pulled that plug I was willing to let that all go by the by as a closed chapter of my life.

Well Amanda Easton, All But Gentlemen, and Glen Colley's various projects all helped me to keep my eye and ear in during the ensuing period, but the guys at Original Rock obviously saw something in both my old stuff and my new stuff and, well, you can see the results for yourself.

I'll maintain my presence here, of course. My next project is already in the making. But my main outlet, under my actual name, will be over at Original Rock! Stay tuned for more Variosities!

PG (Jacky) Gleeson
27/06/2020

Look what I found at http://www.geocities.ws/p_terg/ (Post 2.0)

While chatting online with a fellow reviewer, I decided to see if my stuff from the 1990s was still online.

When it was announced that Geocities would stop hosting free websites I was willing to let it all go.

But since then, many people, including oocities, reocities, and geocities-ws have mirrored content that was (and I'm paraphrasing here) culturally significant!

Which is lucky for me because I have had a look back and there's a helluva lot of material there!

Here are the categories (some of the links in the page are no longer viable):

• Alternative - music that, before 1991, would only have been played on college, community, or pirate radio. 
• Pop & other - Jazz (be it traditional or new-styled), Nouveau-pop, World music, ‘Pop’ of the traditional ‘three-minute’ variety, as well as anything that isn't quite Alternative but probably could be... 
• Compilations - one of the best ways to get your music in more faces, sometimes at less cost than your own CD. And then there’s sampler CDs from organisations whose sole aim is to promote new music.
• Live - my comment on live gigs at various levels around Sydney from 9 August 1995, including Brian May at Sydney’s old Capitol Theatre; Wave Aid; Amanda Easton: the lady who got me back into this; and the band that caused my tinnitus, Screaming Jets, in December 2000.
• Country -  a selection of country and western releases I have reviewed since starting this writing thing! You might note a significant gap between the most recent and the ones before that... take a look at the Mary Schneider review to find out why!
• The Directory has since gone the way of dead websites. It was a huge list, too big for the Geocities servers to handle, containing every artist reviewed on the site. I really have to make that work again.
• Loud - speaks for itself, really. My favourite form of music.
• MP3s - Planned as a review of all artists A-Z on the mp3.com.au website, an ambitious project that never got past A in the writing but Hero Puppy in the pre-planning. None of the links appear to be viable any more.
• Your Reviews - I invited punters, friends, and colleagues to write and contribute their own reviews. I met Cindy on the Yahoo poker-tables and she became the North American arm of the site; Glen, a friend of my brother-in-law’s, was the basis of Trophy Wives ,  Honest John, Salty, and 3 On The Tree; and Mick is a mate of Glen’s who still loves it quite loud!
• Press - only a couple of these links remain viable; the Dan and Mick Carter ones have died, as have the Alta Vista, Anzwers, Google, Hot Bot, Lycos, MSN, and Yahoo! links as they existed at the time. I have recently even referenced the Country Goss article while chatting with a Swedish-metal guitarist.

I hope to be able to revive this aspect of my life again ... if not for these pages then elsewhere (see also https://peterg-gleeson.blogspot.com/2011/12/music-reviews-website.html)

Polaroids and Postcards Interview with Amanda Easton, Christmas Eve 2019

Amanda Easton talks about her new “Polaroids & Postcards” EP
-- Christmas Eve, 2019 --

Peter: First of all, thank you for bringing me out of retirement to review this release! Second of all, congratulations! I said it best when I said, this is an amazing record!

Amanda: Thanks so much! It’s great hearing a review from someone who has known me from the beginning – there’s more context in what you’re saying and hopefully you’ve seen improvement along the way!

P: I wouldn’t say improvement; I would call it change. And for the better! But I just have a few questions to put to you about the new record. I know you had a site on the “Dark Web” where subscribers to your email list could download each of the tracks over a five day period, or elect to buy the record instead. What gave you that idea?

A: I think the world has become more about immersive experiences. People want more than just ‘things’ nowadays and the internet has given us the tools to create multimedia experiences out of our music. There is a movement I’ve been noticing, particularly among US-based indie artists, where they are doing this type of thing and so I’ve been watching and learning and decided to try a version of my own for this new launch. I think the traditional way of releasing music: trying to get on the radio, in the press and in the record stores; is less relevant nowadays, particularly to indies where the millions of dollars needed to make that happen effectively is not available to us! But we have the tools now to bypass many of these gatekeepers and reach potential fans directly. But I think to interest new people in music they’ve never heard of, you need to stand out and offer more than just the songs. Giving people more access to what the artist is thinking and how they are creating the art – in this case music – is one way to do that. People can go press a button on a music streaming service and hear anything they want, but the danger is they will click away 3 and half minutes later and never revisit. If you’ve managed to create a meaningful connection with the person, because they now know the story behind the song, you’ve potentially made a long term fan. I would rather have 2000 real fans than a million streams.

P: Personal connection is very important, but so is what those more established artists have. And I can only hope to have this sort of connection with an artist whose work I have been following for so long. And I’m glad of the opportunity to ask you a few questions that this amazing record brought to my mind in the hope that the viewers at home can strengthen their connection with you as an artist. First of all, I’ve noticed, after reviewing your last three releases now, that there is a distinctive Eastern flavour to your music.

A: I lived in Japan for 2 years, singing 6 nights a week with a cover band. I'm obsessed with the place and its culture and revisit every couple of years.

P: You revisit musically, and artistically. Have you been able to physically revisit?

A: Yes I actually revisit physically every 2 years or so.  I have family in Europe and so often stop over in Asia on the way – so any excuse to go back to Japan! I still have lots of friends there too so I feel like the Japanese connection is an ongoing one even if I’m not there.

P: In the cover-art for “Polaroids and Postcards”, I picked up some other kitsch that could also be related to this obsession. The imagery for your Bowie tribute, for example, for all the world looked like you were holding a radio mic. But through your subscriber-only pages, we see that it was actually a ray-gun which I would date back to perhaps Flash Gordon, Captain Proton, or even some Japanese science fiction from the 60s or 70s.

A: I’ve always been into scifi – the more schlocky the better! I loved Doctor Who and Star Trek as a kid and prefer them both when the special effects were less fancy than today’s. When I lived in Japan, I discovered how big a role scifi played in their pop culture so, of course, that made me love Japan even more. All the kitchiness of their pop culture is attractive to me – the colour, vibrancy, cuteness and theatre of it all. Japan is such a mix of its traditional heritage and its cutting-edge modernness and so you still see vintage scifi imagery – like Godzilla – in current artforms. I just love that!

P: And the science-fiction feel to the record extends to the sounds you’ve created. Do you listen to much vintage synth music or is it just something that you found in your Nord and wanted to share with us?

A: Goldfrapp is one of my favourite music groups ever and they use a lot of vintage synths, so that would be my main influence. That’s actually why I bought the Nord in the first place – it’s what they use! I’m not an expert in ‘sounds’. I play around on my Nord and get something that I Iike for my demos but I need to give credit to my producers (Mavoi for track 5; and for tracks 1,2 3 and 6 a guy who enigmatically wants to be known as ‘Wow and Warmth’) for coming up with the end results. Of course I am executive producer so they get a lot of guidance from me but they are the master at translating the ideas from my demos (and my head!) into what you end up hearing. ‘Wow and Warmth’ always says to me: “It’s good you know exactly what you want” – which I think might be his polite way of saying I’m a bit bossy, but I do have a very fixed idea of the sounds I want but not always the skill at creating them.

P: And how good is it that you have found someone who can do that for you! Definitely a keeper! Now, the credits on the sleeve liner for the record show only three musicians; that you did everythingexcept the bass guitar and cello. Yet you’ve managed to capture the sound of a whole band line-up on the title track!

A: Thank you – again I have to give credit to the producers. There are no additional live musicians or live musical instruments being played on that track. Sounds have been created/layered and built up from synths and samples. It’s weird that I perform live with amazing musicians all the time but in my recording world there is something I really love about synthesized sounds! Yes, track 5 ‘Polaroids & Postcards’ does sound more live than the others but really that is just some of the samples that were chosen – and of course that is a different producer than most of the tracks, so that may have been his influence at play there. I did film some of the live recording sessions so you will see that pop up in some music video but they probably won’t be recreated in a live context – more a unique coming together that happened just for a particular song recording.

P:  Speaking of videos, can we expect any more?

A: Yes, there are two released at this point. There is ‘I Saw the Message’ and also ‘Polaroids & Postcards’. ‘I Saw the Message’ is based around a retro computer screen – the old black screen with green writing, which spells out some of the lyrics. I showed the first rough cut to my email list but the finished version is here: https://youtu.be/e8KKK4upOOc. I’ve also released an anime video for ‘Polaroids & Postcards’ here: https://youtu.be/sMjr0B9V3oY. I have shot the green screen component of ‘Man Who Fell to Earth’ (I am an alien) and that is going to be edited in to an existing (public domain of course) vintage Japanese sci-fi movie to create a music video – so that one will probably be next. I also have some footage from the recording sessions of ‘Letter to a Small Boy’ and being a more organic song, that will have a more natural music video too. There will probably be a video for every song eventually – I love working with video but it’s very time consuming since I like to do most of the editing myself, so I tend to release them quite a bit after the actual songs!

P: And, from the eye of a music collector since the mid 1970s that notices small and probably insignificant things like catalog number and liner notes, this is EP3 of 3(1. Blue; 2. Disco; 3. Postcards). Is this a hint at perhaps there is a full album coming? A best-of? A box-set? Yes, we can access them online as they were released, but is there enough interest to be able to provide those who want one with a hard-copy of everything in the same place?

A: Love that you noticed that! No, no best-of planned, but a full length album planned for end of next year. We’re half done already!

P: Can you tell us what we can expect? New stuff, previous releases?

A: All brand new but direction-wise in the same ball park as ‘Polaroids & Postcards’, at least in part. P&Pis a very emotional and nostalgic collection of songs and so are some from the album, but I will also have a bit more attitude and fun on some of the new stuff.

P: Amanda, you must be so proud of this new record! I have never had a reaction to a release as I did with this! I should expect that you’re going to be taking it to the people as much as possible?

A: Thank you! I find it so hard to judge my own work – I’ve always been proud of everything I’ve done at the timebut the world doesn’t always like it! And of course looking back sometimes I agree with the world too! I do love this record and the signs are that there are quite a few others that agree so if that’s the case I will continue to promote it!

P: Thank you for your time, today. I really hope to be able to see you live very, very soon! I haven’t seen you since the release of Skinat Fox Studios back in the 90s.

A: Wowee I was such a babe in the woods then! I feel more at home with everything now – I feel like I have found my place more musically. Yes I hope to see you at a gig soon! Thanks so much for staying interested in what I’m doing!

…

Review of Amanda Easton's "Polaroids & Postcards" - an Independent release

Amanda Easton - Polaroids & Postcards – Independent release

Every three years we are treated with a new release from Sydney’s Pop Princess Amanda Easton. This year’s release was timed for Christmas and, like all of the previous releases featured on this blogspot, this one will not disappoint.

“Polaroids & Postcards” is an inspiration. It inspired me to seek her out for a full-on interview about the songs, the packaging, what’s been happening in her life between records, etc. But without the tech, the platform on which to post it or, at the stupid end of the year, the time, my curtailed written reaction to this new collection will have to suffice.

If you have an expectation when you hear the name Amanda Easton, forget it at once. Polaroids & Postcards retains some of these sounds / feelings but extends the lady more than ever before. Think Steve Strange in 1980 or Gary Wright in 1972. Think Peter Osborne’s 1998 soundtrack to Fritz Lang’s 1926 masterpiece “Metropolis”. Think Kraut Rock exponents Tangerine Dream’s “Ultima Thule Part 2”, also from 1972. There are some vintage synth sounds emanating from Amanda’s fingers which make this record as current and vibrant as anything else available today.

Man Who Fell to Earth had me thinking of Bowie even before putting the disc on. This is an outpouring of love for a man who affected so many of us “even though we never met”. The instrumentation harkened me back to the soundtracks of Eastern European movies of the 70s and 80s; perhaps even Japanese cinema from a decade or two prior? It’s a feature of the record which carried through Eye to Eye and Rockabilly Blue: the portable record player on which Amanda is standing on the cover suggests so .. or is it, like all art, all open to the beholder?

The other tracks include the dealbreaker I Saw The Message, which is also the first video from this record: love gone wrong, from (someone else’s) experience; the missive from mother to son Letter to a Small Boy: He may get it now, he may get it when she can no longer put her arms around him, but it is something anyone with a son would want him to know; and the title Postcards & Polaroids: the other tilt to Blue and Disco- a full-band sound with a hint of twixt-disco-and-chill beat. Fell could also be released or remixed in this vein.

This is an amazing record. Each song had me stopping what I was doing: taking heed .. taking it all in .. absorbing the emotion that went into it, came out of it; I was even welling up at some points! There are no adequate words to describe what this record did to me on the first hearing .. I should have been recording my facial expressions as the best way to express what I was feeling was each track unwound. The second, the third hearings: my words cannot convey what this collection did.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Decade from Amanda! «««««

Amanda Easton - Disco Disconnected - Independent release

I’ve been following Amanda’s work for a long time now and am impressed by how much it has grown over the years. So I was quite excited to hear, three years after I wrote about her Out Of The Blue crowd-funded project, that she had a new record in the offing.

Amanda calls it an album, but with four new tracks and a remix of each of them, it is probably more an EP. Whatever you want to call it, Disco Disconnected hits all manner of outlets at the end of the month. Apart from the influence-artists’ weaving their influence throughout, I got a sense of some late-90s Kylie with other sonic echoes in the mix.

The lead / title track has quite the Eastern flavour while encapsulating many of the eras of disco including Bros of the 80s (I also got this from the music-video), Massive Attack / Portishead of the 90s, and Goldfrapp of the 00s. An Alison Goldfrapp song recently appeared on my MP3 player and I could have sworn it was Amanda. I said as much to Amanda at the time and her response was that Goldfrapp is one of her favourite acts. That comes as no surprise when listening to Disco, or any of her previous works including Dance To The Music In My Head, Moshi Moshi, Good Old Fashioned Heartache or The Whole Shebang.   

The disconnection from disco continues on the new mini/album / EP with the chill-out of Untangle and the Bond Film outro-credits underscore Hanging By A Thread. Thread is a mix of Shirley Bassey on Goldfinger and Cilla Black in To Sir With Love combined with a nice cello. This isn’t Amanda’s first foray into Bondesque either! New Bohemians harkens back to Amanda’s previous works with some production-quality effects thrown in to keep us on our toes. This track is also getting a lot of “air” time on Amanda’s soundcloud, described by one subscriber as a “bouncy, happy, positive song.” Thus rounds off the “original mix” part of the record. 

The John Ov3rblast Remix of the single retains the mystic feel of the single but is more ethereal; more chill-out than disco. Untangle’s House Master Flex Remix would be a track you’d play between the disco and the chill-out, or something a relaxing Sunday-afternoon radio programmer would schedule. The No Qualms Remix [Hi Rez] version of Hanging By A Thread is a tilt at Kraftwerk but is another calm-down disconnection. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Amanda as a baritone, here you can! And after all the chillin’ we finish up with some serious DOOV on the New Bohemians Stereo Missile Remix: dance to it, work out to it, sweat to it, turn it up!

Amanda Easton’s Disco Disconnected would sit quite happily alongside any work for or by any of these artists, with any currently featured on so-called top-40 radio, or on alternative radio. I can picture it now- rocking up to my barista for my morning coffee, only to be woken happily by Amanda’s dulcet tones intro’d by Kyle and Jackie O- «««¶

peterg
17Mar16 

Amanda Easton – Out of the Blue EP – Independent release

Amanda Easton’s career goes way back, back to songs like Skin, Celebrity, and Falling In, but "Out of the Blue", her latest crowd-funded 5-tracker, shows how she has grown as an artist since our first meeting back in the 90s.  

Back in the 90s I was full of praise for the sounds she was producing, and today she has grown so much from and with it. The work with the Pop Tarts, the lounge sounds of the Basement and Taronga Zoo, her work in the mainstream with names like Matthews, Reyne, Clapton, Powderfinger, and Hines have all helped generate the work behind her latest release:

Out of the Blue Track by track-

1. Dance to the Music in my Head
   Sexy, sultry- generates the vision of someone softly swaying with their eyes closed, a gentle smile on their lips .. slowly builds.

2. Moshi Moshi
   I had visions of Japanese pop with this one, that crosses Britney with Kylie, and in a good way, akin to her own early work.  

3. No Bolt Out of the Blue
   No she certainly is not! This could be a TripleJ track, given the contents of the Hottest 100 in the last few years. Brit-Pop meets Alt-Aus in the vein of Regina Spector, Sara Blasko, etc.

4. The Whole Shebang
   Very Dusty / Sandie / Cilla with her own je ne sais quoi. Her press release says that the girl-singers of the 1960s had been “disregarded as relevant to [her] type of music” but, having recently been introduced to it by Damian (Celebate Rifles) Lovelock, she’s certainly let the influence show in this and the next one.

5. Good Old Fashioned Heartache
   A gentle swinger, this time in the vain of the Spector Wall of Sound with more of that Dusty / Sandie / Cilla for good measure.

Life has been full of ups and downs for Amanda and her family, something to which I can relate, and hopefully there’s more good than bad in the future for them all! "Out of the Blue" is certainly a fine example of where she’s been, where she is, and perhaps, where she’s going.

Very nice! «««

peterg

24Mar13