VIDEO: Berlin's Mynolia Releases Live Video & Announces SXSW Shows

Mynolia has announced two SXSW dates and released live sessions of two of her songs, the title track "All Things Heavy," and "The Bear & Shell."

Mynola explains:

"Shot in the studio where both songs were recorded, this live session of All Things Heavy and The Bear & Shell was an opportunity to share the colours and raw ingredients that created the foundational feeling of the whole album.

With old friends and new, the shoot was a creative playground - from producer Jeremy Black live mixing off screen and playing in the album's atmospheric layers, to back breaking set design, stapling 50 meters of blue velvet to the ceiling, making all my Lynchian dreams come true. In a time where music is becoming predominantly a streaming platform playlist item, we wanted to focus on the synergy and magic of playing live among friends, and performing the songs as they would be heard at our gigs."

"I have no cultural or national identity whatsoever, and in that lack of anchor I think I just clung onto music like the lighthouse in the fog," says Mynolia, a young artist whose debut All Things Heavy just came out via Bronze Rat Records.

By lacking identity, she means she grew up all over the world and remembers everything from rescuing crabs in New Zealand, to learning traditional songs in India, and even playing right-handed guitar in Canada when her parents didn't know about left-handed ones. Though she now calls Berlin home, Mynolia's travels deeply inform her worldview, one she defines as "zooming out for perspective".

"I have always felt just one step removed from the environments I've found myself in," the singer says. That internal alienation, twinned with her globetrotting past, helps her balance her interior life with the world around her. "People argue that our living standard is higher than ever, but I see the types of problems shifting into a more internal and insidious space," she says.

Like Weyes Blood, Mynolia's music is both personally and globally invested. Her lyrics bring out a universal vulnerability, such as in "White Noise." A lub-dub, lub-dub backing beat suggests the heartbeats that stand in for companionship. "Sometimes I need to know that there's heartbeats close to mine," she sings between gauzy ooh's and ahh's, encapsulating the loneliness that drives the dreamlike song.

The young artist is especially gifted at crafting melodies, whether she's phrasing her lyrics or collaging non-verbal singing. She has an intuitive sense of knowing where to layer, where to strip down, and where to be bare. Traditional folk choirs, eastern flute music, choral singing, and opera helped round out her vocal development.

The electronic elements tilt the singer closer towards Men I Trust or Bat for Lashes. "I just spiral around facing every direction," she says, and this explains her musical influences, songwriting habits, and philosophy on social change.

As much as the melodies and lyrics stand out, her guitar work and backing beats contribute important texture. "Stall Stickers" opens with vocals, then a catchy guitar riff, until the drumbeat drops in. Mynolia sings without words, building atmosphere to the gorgeous brutality of the chorus: "Like a snake, you wrap yourself around my waist. I won't let go because I don't wanna be alone," she sings, echoing the loneliness of "White Noise." Here, though, she's echoing a collective loneliness that tinges the nightlife world which Stall Stickers describes."

The haunting "Train of Thought" comes off one part ghost story and one part campfire tale. The singer's effected vocals paint a lyrical landscape, one that keeps listeners guessing about its true context. The layers of instrumentation, including a guitar "played through whacked-out pedals" and vocals push forward the central mystery of this track.

Though the album is titled All Things Heavy, Mynolia's personality is more balanced. "My driving force is discomfort and connection, making room for the spectrum of emotions we all face, while laughing at it," she says. It is in this spirit that she closes with "Baby AI," a little joke about big fears of artificial intelligence.

"I wrote 'Baby AI' as a joke plea to an emotionless techno child that seems like it will outgrow us quick, and we might end up at its mercy." Full of science fiction references over an acoustic guitar riff. In a sweetly lilting voice, Mynolia considers the ways she is disconnected. "Baby AI, follow your heart," she sings deadpan.

Mostly what we learn from the song, however, is that this artist refuses to give less than all to her songs, spinning beautiful melodies and lush vocals from uncanny sources. After all, a lack of identity means you're free to make up your own. On Mynolia's sharp debut All Things Heavy, the singer invents herself as a vulnerable dreamer, armored only by heavenly melodies as she moves through an increasingly disconnected world.

Watch the live session here:

Photo credit: Ginevra Battaglia

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