Often, the LA-based songwriter and producer, creates music to process their religious upbringing, building an intimate safe space to express themself and grow. On April 5th they're releasing the first part of a year-long project, their new EP, Bad Girls Cry. The EP is about looking inside to solve unhealthy patterns that become obstacles to personal growth.

Now I feel like I reached the stage where I am a fan of my own music and it was kind of a proud moment for me to be able to say ‘You know what? I'm actually enjoying listening to my own songs’” Lord said.

"[...] it's in the moments when you are dealing with loaded, complex emotions or struggling against something that feels impossible to defeat, that I truly feel how liberating and cathartic making music is."

“My musical inspiration,” says Paloma Monnappa “comes from travelling to different places and meeting new people, discovering record stores and finding hidden gems”. Paloma Monnappa is a Tibetan-Indian multi-talented artist based in Sri Lanka and India. Aside from her music career as a DJ, she is a renowned model, actress and Discovery Channel television host. With her partner Emanuel, she started the brand Tropical Wax, celebrating vinyl culture, underground music, art and surfing.

"When I was growing up, there was no way I could have dreamed of becoming an electronic music artist. I hadn’t even heard of the genre. Then, one day, I met these guys. They were called the Audio Units [Bangalore-based brother duo]. I became friends with Ashwin – he’s one of the brothers and still my dearest friend – and went to his gig in Goa, a state in southwestern India. And that's when I first heard techno and I was like, “What is this music? What is this sound? I have to learn how to do this!” That's how the journey began."

"I think it’s important we promote underground techno how it is, recognising that it’s a sound which gives the freedom to live. Otherwise, raves become places where we don't feel safe or we feel like ‘I don't wanna go there because this is like a fashion show; people are gonna look at me or they are gonna judge me’. Also, to really achieve that, the scene should be diverse and make sure that everyone feels included in certain spaces and we're still working towards that."

I meet Safeen James online – as we are used to in this post-pandemic world – and this doesn't prevent her positivity and warmth from reaching me. In very little time she welcomes me into some part of her world and her story, giving me a better understanding of the short film that, after several views, I know quite well: “Away from the Fields”, her latest work about being a child of the diaspora.

Sometimes you meet someone and it feels like a film: a warmth grows inside your belly when you look at them, there are long and endless flowing conversations, a night when – a little bit faded – you danced to Dire Straits’ ‘Romeo and Juliet’ together and they whisper in your ear, ‘From now on, this is our song’. And your passions? So aligned! They even understand your weird obsession with 1920s vintage chairs.

How is it possible that they can suddenly stop texting you?

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