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.