On Lost & Found, Swedish musician Mira Aasma is raw and unmasked, constructing a poignant composition that’s her most affecting to date.
The witchy pop performer drives through an emotional minefield on her new stripped-down production, although under her fragile tones there’s a deceptively positive message and powerful outlook.
A choir of ambient voices gives way to Mira’s vulnerable vocals, synthesized chords and a sprinkling of violin that slowly spin their way to a gently rhapsodic crescendo.
Lost & Found is the second track to be revealed from Mira Aasma’s upcoming Nighttime Memos EP, her cosiest release so far, and initially borne of a series of primitive, back-to-basics demos recorded in her bedroom.
Using only a small Casio synthesizer and the built-in microphone on a pair of headset style headphones, she laid down all of the EP’s five tracks in the comfort of her home, later working in a studio with friends to re-record and add instrumentation.
The first track, Sunday, was unveiled last month, similarly stripped-down but uniquely punctuated with proud blares of saxophone, but it is on Lost & Found that Nighttime Memos is at its most revealing.
The lyrics (“Every time you’re falling down, you’re falling way down through the ground / Every time you’re way up high, all of the shadows seem to hide”) deal with the highs and lows of emotional turbulence, and almost unambiguously seem to address mood and mental health.
Yet of the track, Mira is fairly tight-lipped on the meaning, telling us: “I think that the lyrics have to speak for themselves in this song. It’s very close to me and I imagine that many people probably will recognize themselves in it.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg9Y_rQh0yf/
Nighttime Memos will be Mira Aasma’s third collection of music to date, almost three years exactly since the release of her debut single Ghost.
Born in 1996 and hailing from the vibrant Gothenburg music scene, Mira Aasma started out seeking to sound like Enya and released considerably moodier, gloomier, and even goth-tinged pop material, releasing her first EP Stereoscope in 2016.
She followed it up with a self-titled mini-album last year, marrying violins, synths and her shadowy vocal tones and including the brilliant art pop of Snow White Wedding. A standalone single, Witches, followed this March.
Nighttime Memos is released on Friday November 30 on Birds Records.
Follow Mira Aasma
Facebook • Instagram • Spotify
Lost & Found Lyrics
Not a day left to get back to
Not a day left to find
All of the shadows that you tried to resist
Are growing fearless in your mind
Not a day left to hold it in
Not a day to let it out
You’re leaning back and longing for a place
Where you can dance under the sun
Every time you’re falling down
You’re falling way down through the ground
Every time you’re way up high
All of the shadows seem to hide
You’re feeling lost and feeling unfound
Stay away just to watch your dreams quietly passing by
In the real coming distant weeks keeping up with the speed of light
Not another day turning into night, gotta get back to sleep
You drift away if you stay around on the bottom of the sea
Every time you’re falling down
You’re falling way down through the ground
Every time you’re way up high
All of the shadows seem to hide
You’re feeling lost and feeling found
