Tracks of the Week (15/6/2017) (The Pandoras, Saintraja, Sasha Nicole, Midnight Fusic)

Our tracks of the week is back! This time we’re bringing you some girl group, high-energy action, some pretty profound alternative rock, a powerful R&B song about love and much more!

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Jangan Lari – The Pandoras

Missing the younger days when everything felt a little bit chirpier? Those days when Amy Mastura was still relevant in the music industry? When people danced to funkier tunes than EDM? Well Jangan Lari is the closest you’ll ever get to a time machine. The Pandoras are a 5-member-girl-group chock-filled with talent in the shape of harmony and all of them really are the focus of this track. But it’s not all just singing melodies. The musical production behind this is brilliant too, what with the playful string section in the background and the great keyboard crescendo during the bridge where they start singing Jangan lari over and over again; it’s a small but really heartwarming experience. Although the song is made as an OST to a Malay drama called Budak Ijat, the love song is charming and adorable for people across all ages.

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D4U – Saintraja

Saintraja‘s new R&B-dance-track leaves you soul-searching. Catchy, discerning and powerful, the music video and song doesn’t just give you a cliche #LoveWins tribute to the suffering spirit of the LGBT community, but serves it to you on a platter of noir. It’s an affectionate love story that gets progressively darker. Just when you think the lovers have managed to get out from the people who seek to hurt them, one of them pulls out a gun. Notwithstanding the simple, sultry tones, of Saintraja’s production, the song is given more nuance by this enigmatic music video. Maybe it speaks to the fact that as a sexual minority in a nation filled with oppressors, the struggle is endless. And sometimes it comes from the ones you love.

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Heart of May – Midnight Fusic

This alternative rock outfit combines the jangly guitar of modern indie sounds but the vocals sound a lot like those post-Britpop days of yore, such as The Kooks. Midnight Fusic‘s new single Heart of May is a song about nostalgia – a slighty sad yearning for the past. (“Right now today, feels like yesterday”). The band name is very telling of the sound too. They emanate this emotion of being alone in an alley at midnight, waiting for a brokenhearted lover to forgive you. Overall, a great track to jam to, and definitely a band to look out for .

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Selama-Lamanya (ft. Altimet) – Sasha Nicole

Sasha Nicole‘s new single with rap guru Altimet is an easy-going love song. Nothing grabs your attention. Usually in pop songs like this there is a resounding salvation in some smooth flow that Altimet would dish out, but when it comes to this, the rap master doesn’t do much but to preface the song with a little urban flavour. Sasha Nicole falls in line with the hundred of other pop artists out there singing the same genre through a love song that can be placed anywhere and it would somehow “resonate” with the big, nebulous entity called “the masses”. It’s trite, forgettable and bland. But if production value is all it takes to really make it big in the music scene today, then I guess you can call it a hit.

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To keep updated on fresh local tracks of the week, whether it’s indie or mainstream, follow our playlist on Spotify below!