#39 - Mano a Overmono 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! If you were at EDC Vegas this weekend, we hope you extended your out-of-office replies through Monday. This week, we’re talking about a couple of our favorite EDM artists.

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🌶️ Review of Good Lies by Overmono

2. 💿 This Week in Music: FYRE Fest 2.0, prosecutions in hip-hop, and a few contest winners.

3. 🔀 Playlist Updates: Groupthink, P.O.S., M83, and more.

4. 🎙️ Fred again.. is our artist of the week.

Rating Rationale: Much like what you might expect from the name, Overmono’s sound is much more than mono. Resembling a blend of multiple EDM subgenres, Overmono is probably one of the best new DJ groups we’ve heard in a very long time (sorry Kx5), though they’ve actually been active in the underground UK EDM scene since 2016. Similar to Disclosure, the DJ group feels like a natural pairing because the two DJs are brothers, a harmonic mano a mano, if you will. Good Lies is their highly anticipated debut album and it’s already gaining critical acclaim, and for good reason. With a unique blend of trance, elements of glitchy dubstep, and liquid drum and bass, we expect Overmono to rise quickly in popularity. “So U Kno” has been a club banger since 2021 and “Good Lies” has been a strong follow-up single, but other songs that we think Overmono demonstrates brilliant coalescence of EDM subgenres include “Feelings Plain” and “Walk Thru Water.”

This Week in Music 💿

🌴 FYRE Fest 2.0: This is not a drill. Billy McFarland is looking for a Bahamas redemption, announcing his plans for both FYRE Festival 1.5, which will be a Broadway musical?! and FYRE Festival 2.0. The location and details are currently unknown, but it can’t be worse than the first one…right?

🧑‍⚖️ Hip-Hop Prosecutions: This is a drill. Brooklyn drill rappers, Sheff G, Sleepy Hallow, and 30 other gang associates have been indicted on 140 counts of criminal activity, including conspiracy to commit murder. We dropped a thread on the possibility of their lyrical expression being used against them in court. Across the pond, British rapper, Slowthai, has been charged with two counts of rape, resulting in UK festivals dropping him from their lineups (Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, Parklife).

🕶 Double Vision: Each spring, the Eurovision Song Contest, an international song competition organized by the EU, draws in millions of viewers. This year’s winner is Loreen, making it a rare second victory (2012 was her first time winning), and following her win, her song “Tattoo” hit Spotify’s Global Top 50.

📹 2023 Tiny Desk Contest Winner: Every year, NPR’s popular live concert video series hosts a contest to search for the next great undiscovered artist. This year, Little Moon, a six-person vocal group from Salt Lake City, won.

🏳️‍🌈⃤ Prism Prize: The Prism Prize, an award established to recognize Canadian music video artistry, has revealed its top 10 nominees.

💯 Minus 1: Due to the popularity of Live Nation’s Concert Week, Live Nation is expanding Concert Week by promoting Festival Weekend by providing $99 all-in 1-day tickets to 12 major festivals in the U.S.

🍎 Apple Music Guides: Apple has launched new, curated concert discovery features that highlight the best music venues on Apple Maps and Apple Music by leveraging the artist discovery platform Bandsintown.

💵 Artist Impact Program: Earlier this week, TikTok launched a program that allows artists to opt into their Commercial Music Library so their music can be monetized by allowing businesses to leverage their music in ad campaigns. This comes right before a decision was made by the Montana governor to ban TikTok.

💰 Securing the Bag: Swedish Web3 music startup, anotherblock, has raised €4 million to support scaling their NFT royalty marketplace offering. Miami “engage-to-earn” music startup, Unitea, has also raised, in aggregate, $7 million as part of their seed round.

🤝 300 x Remain Solid: 300 Entertainment (Young Thug, Gunna, Megan Thee Stallion, Tee Grizzley) and Remain Solid (YNW Melly, King Von) have partnered together on a joint venture, signing BreezyLYN as their first JV artist.

 📲 Milly Rock: Late last year, we spotlighted Audiomack as a disruptive music streaming service with artist-friendly tools to support artist discovery. Audiomack’s creator app, which launched last February, has reached 1 million installations.

👼👹 Angels and Demons: While ZHU is planning to record his entire upcoming album live in a… cathedral, Kim Petras’ debut album, Feed the Beast, will be arriving from the underworld on June 23rd.

🤠 Houston and Austin: On the same week that Travis Scott previews his upcoming album, Utopia, for the Houston Astros baseball team, Post Malone announces that his fifth full-length album, Austin (originally was supposed to be an acoustic album), will be released later this summer on July 28th.

🩸🍭 Blood and Sugar: That’s the name of Boys Like Girls’ first new release since 2012 (yes, it’s been that long).

🏙️ Returning Festivals: The Atlanta-based music festival, Music Midtown, is back in Piedmont Park, with three days of music that features artists including P!NK, Flume, Billie Eilish, The 1975, Guns N’ Roses, and Lil Baby. Similarly, The National’s “Homecoming Festival” will be returning to Cincinnati for the first time since 2018.

🧊 Cold Touch: The feeling (and name of song) you get after Kito, an LA-based DJ and producer, utilizes GrimesAI to produce their new collaborative track.

🎵 Artist Discovery Mix: Summer Walker has dropped her EP tracklist, which features Solange, Childish Gambino, and Steve Lacy. The Japanese House and Matty Healy collaborate on single, “Sunshine Baby.” Indie artist, Charli Adams, released her first song in two years. GROUPLOVE dropped their new single, “Francine.” Chicago drum and bass producer, Keeno, dropped his EP, Courage. Experimental pop-punk band, Origami Angel, released, “My PG County Summer (our closest description of them is The Fall of Troy and Mayday Parade).”

🚶‍♂️ On Tour: Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge are going on an international summer tour this year as NxWorries. Lil Durk is also hitting the summer tour circuit with Kodak Black, NLE Choppa, and DD Osama. 88Rising signed singer, NIKI, also announced her world tour. Finally, all-girl K-pop group aespa is going on their first world tour.

🎉 BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!: The annual Brooklyn summer concert series in Prospect Park is back for its 45th anniversary. Check out the season trailer below. Also, did we mention that it’s free?

🤑 Licensing Highs: UK recorded music royalty organization, PPL, generated record high revenues of $336 million in 2022 while PRS For Music collected approximately $1.19 billion in 2022.

📈 Tencent Music Entertainment: China’s largest music entertainment company, Tencent Music, grew Q1 digital music revenues by 89% to $167 million. Subscription users for online music increased by 18% to 94.4 million. That’s strong growth!

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

Artist of the Week: Fred again..🎙️

Primer: We know, we know, Fred again.. is probably already classified as a mainstream popular artist. We’ve been following his journey for over two years, and have toyed around with spotlighting him, and the time has come.

Boots n’ Cats: Growing up as a descendant of British aristocrats in South London, Frederick John Philip Gibson lived in the same neighborhood as the founder of ambient music (a genre that creates an atmosphere or tone as opposed to a consistent melody or rhythm), Brian Eno. Brian was a well-established record producer, known for his work with eclectic artists like David Bowie and David Byrne. A few years after Fred joined an a cappella group at Brian’s studio, the two developed a mentor-mentee relationship. To this day, Fred shares that Brian allows him to see his music through a childlike wonder–pushing him to consistently create and publish. Brian continues to play an influential role in Fred’s creative process(earlier this month, the two even dropped a surprise album).

Songwriting Roots: Recently, we learned Fred had written and produced for numerous artists before starting to create his own music, including Ellie Goulding, Charli XCX, Shawn Mendes, George Ezra, Ed Sheeran, and Stormzy. Fred again.. began writing music at the age of 10 and, it wasn’t until an encouraging text message from his mentor, Brian Eno, that he started developing the concept for his 2021 album Actual Life, which became his official debut as a solo artist.

What’s the hype?: Over the last three years, Fred again.. has resonated with such a wide audience due to his ability to take fleeting emotions, moments, and conversations and encapsulate them into song. Every track feels like a diary entry allowing us to take a peek into Fred’s mind through the people he meets, his musings, and best of all, his soundscapes. His signature production includes a vertical screen that plays like FaceTime on an iPhone, and throughout his songs, the visuals of their namesake appear–he describes this as the DNA of his music.

Current Label: Atlantic Records UK

Genre: Electronic, dance, trance, feel-good, euphoric

Influences: Ed Sheeran, Stormzy, Headie, Burna Boy, and live performances. Fred describes how the intense reactions from his fans have continued to fuel his fire for creating new music.

Look forward to: Following up on his iconic performances earlier this year with Skrillex and Four Tet, Fred again.. has a big festival year planned at Primavera Sound in Spain, Glastonbury in London, and Lollapalooza in Chicago, among many others later this year. Until then, enjoy his iconic Boiler Room debut:

Wrap Up 👏

Yo, you hear that? We're closing the newsletter this week with some high-intensity lyrics reminiscent of the Amazonian wilderness.

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See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya