Hastings singer-songwriter Joëlle Coutinho releases debut

The song is a poetic story, a mixture of the subconscious mind and fantasy, she explains: “The song started in a Hastings studio as a melodic lullaby and morphed naturally into what it is today: a combination of experimental rock, poetry and pop with Celtic and cinematic undertones.

“I started doing music in Hastings a couple of years ago. I worked in a theatre, The White Rock Theatre, and it was full of creative people, and I just started doing music. I had always been into it, but I met a guitarist, Peter Wilson, and we just started meeting up and getting ideas out and writing in a studio. The experience was really natural. It just flowed, and I also had a lot of songs that I had written previously.

“We started writing together. A lot of it was experimental. We just jammed ideas for a while, and we didn’t want to put any pressure on how it turned out. When you are in a studio space and there are no residential houses around, you are not inhibited in any way. It is a lot of experimental rock and experimental pop and there is also a poetic element.

“The song started off as a lullaby with a really simple riff. We thought ‘Let’s just keep going with this,’ and I started humming over it. It was like a meditation. We were so relaxed and so dreamy. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it.

“But I had started reading a Patti Smith book. She does a lot of spoken word, as does Jim Morrison. I am really into Jim Morrison. And we just used to start off with this melodic riff. I thought I would write a poem to try to approach it as more of a story, more spoken word. I started off and it became a mixture of my subconscious mind mixed with fantasy, almost like a character in a story. All the words just came out I was just so relaxed. It was definitely therapeutic. I think music does help a lot.

“During lockdown, it has been such a blessing to be able to work on this.”

She has been working remotely with Craig Hunter Parker, director at VFX company Motif Studios in Cape Town, South Africa. Craig has come up with the video.

“In the video, she is on a journey. She is in a car and she starts off in the city. She is listening to this music and finds herself totally escaping. It ends up as an out-of-world experience. She is transported…”

Watch the video on https://isirenmusic.com/ and click on the YouTube link.

Joëlle is now working towards an EP: “We are just in the process now of picking songs that I have done, that stand out or that have something about them. The next single will be a little bit more Celtic. I know what it is going to be, but it is just a question of fine-tuning it and getting it to a place where I am happy with it. I hope it won’t be too long after this one.”

For Joëlle, it is all part of coming out of lockdown; “It is about how you can still achieve things during lockdown, how technology can help you create and communicate with others.”

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