Mystee – cold coffee/hurricane martin (2021)
Making music and having your subconscious as your guide can be a tricky business. There’s always a danger that something scary or something you’d prefer to keep inside you comes out, leaving you completely vulnerable. Yet, Boston-born and Cardiff-bred Mystee, aka Ilana Held, has the courage to let her subconscious guide her through her music, including her latest two-track single ‘cold coffee/hurricane martin’.
Yes, dreams can turn into nightmares and vice versa, and Mystee is trying to make a sense of it all here. Mystee shares about the single ‘cold coffee’: “I had one of those nightmares that feel so real even after you wake up. In the dream, it was my wedding day, and everything felt completely wrong. Towards the end, I was saying to myself, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this’, while sitting on a houndstooth bathroom floor. I woke up just as I was about to either go through with the wedding or run, and I had to write a song about it. ‘cold coffee’ explores my hidden fears and desires.”
Usually, with dream/nightmare themed music, you’d expect something dark and subdued. Yet, Mystee takes quite a different approach to both songs. With Mystee’s songwriting, vocals and guitar, and additional guitar, bass, drums, production and mixing by Chris Donelan, she delivers a more chirpy side of dreams/nightmares. As if she’s trying to dispel any dark thoughts and ideas with a more upbeat mood. Still, the dark more melancholic elements flow as an undercurrent in both songs with Mystee seemingly being able to channel her subconscious through her music quite effectively.
The quality of the two songs comes even more to light having in mind that these are her first solo releases. Not only interesting but quite promising.
For more from Mystee check out her official website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
