The second track from the Australian singer’s upcoming EP.
After delivering the wonderful “Wake up with You” back in October, Emerson Leif has returned with his next jam, the dreamy “Next2.” Co-produced by frequent collaborator Golden Vessel, who also helped out on 2018’s “Twenty2” and featured Leif on “Hesitate,” the track marks the second from Leif’s upcoming new project.
There are few artists that I know that have made such an impact with such little music. While he has been featured in other artist’s music, today, Australian musician Emerson Leif shared his third release, the smooth “Wake up with You.” It follows 2018’s “Twenty2” and the wildly popular “Hesitate.” Like his first two, this song features some signature production from one of Leif’s close friends and one of my favorite new artists, Golden Vessel. With the release of “Wake up with You” also came word of Leif’s debut EP, which we’ll be on the lookout for.
Emerson Leif had a bit to say about the song, noting: “‘Wake Up With You’ is an expression of how life-giving a significant person’s presence in your day can be. To reach out from a dreamscape of sleep and feel the touch of a familiar hand. The seemingly simple experience of waking up next to someone that ‘just gets you’ is in itself both cathartic and regenerative.”
The song is an exploration into the time in Leif’s life where he was focusing more on the “grind” or, how he puts it: “I was working for the man on night shift a few years ago and would get home when the sun was already high in the sky. The experience of not being able to share that time with someone brought a clarity to the value of something that I had in the past taken for granted. ‘Wake Up With You’ has been burning a hole in my laptop since then and is the first single of an upcoming EP that I am excited to share in the coming months.”
You can find “Wake up with You” from Emerson Leif on our Tasty! Jams playlists.
Golden Vessel teams with Emerson Leif once again for this gorgeous new song.
Golden Vessel graced us yet again with another incredible song, “HIGHWAY”, featuring Emerson Leif. Previously, the two collaborated on “Hesitate” and “Twenty2.” “HIGHWAY” was accompanied by a music video which shows Golden Vessel in the back seat of a car staring deeply into the camera and singing along to the song. Recorded in Japan, it’s the second of three videos that Golden Vessel recorded during his time in Tokyo.
Speaking on the track Golden Vessel said, “‘HIGHWAY’ was the first song that I made for the album and it came together really fast. I made the beat in the morning and called my friend Emerson Leif to see whether he was up to anything. He came over in the afternoon and I had the idea of recording him a few times across the track without thinking about lyrics / melodies beforehand and just singing subconsciously. He kind of mumbled and formed words and what came out was really exciting and felt really honest and so I took the 5 recordings and cut it up into a song and it was pretty much done at that point.”
Emerson Leif also had a few words to say about the lyrics for the song: “The lyrics for ‘HIGHWAY’ went straight from the heart into the microphone. When I woke up that morning my beautiful wife had been joking around hiding under the covers and saying that she might sleep in all day and I could wake her up when I got home. Sometimes those seemingly insignificant moments end up being the most magical things we share with people. That sentiment was no doubt echoing in my head on the drive to Max’s studio and its intimacy made its way into the song in a beautifully genuine way. Sometimes these magical moments happen when you are comfortable and not overthinking your environment or who you are with. It is a great gift being able to create something beautiful and honest with a friend.”
Golden Vessel just finished touring alongside BAYNK and Akurei and then made a quick pit spot at SXSW before making his debut album announcement last week. Previously, he teamed with Oscar Key Sung for “DIZZY”, fought Mallrat with moon rocks in his “MOONSTONE” music video, and joined forces with DUCKWRTH and Elkkle for “BIGBRIGHT.” I interviewed Golden Vessel earlier this month and caught him live in Los Angeles, check out the exclusive photos and video here.
I got the chance to catch him live in LA last week opening for BAYNK at the Teragram Ballroom and Golden Vessel surely lived up to the hype. Taking the stage with fellow Australian producer Akurei they gave us a taste of some new music in between jams like “DIZZY”, “BIGBRIGHT”, and an incredible cover of Frank Ocean’s “Chanel.” It truly was a golden performance but if you missed the tour you’ll still have an opportunity to catch him live at SXSW next week where he’ll be playing at multiple showcases.
I also got the chance to ask him a few questions about the tour, his collaboration process, and his plans for the future — which seemingly includes an upcoming album.
See the full Q&A below followed by some photos from the show:
How has the tour been? What’s your favorite place you’ve been to on this tour so far?
The tour has been amazing! It’s our first time over here and the reception has been so warm everywhere. We’ve driven a lot and we got to drive through Zion National Park in Utah and do a 1hr hike which was insanely beautiful.
Your recent singles have all been collaborations with artists ranging in many different styles. How do you approach collaborating and does the music come about a different way each time? Do you feel songs like “BIGBRIGHT”, which features three artists, are formed differently than songs like “DIZZY” or “Hesitate”, which was you and one other person?
I try to be in the room as much as I can as I think bouncing ideas back and forth in person creates way better songs than email! Sometimes I’ll bring in an idea to start from but most of the time it’s from scratch and we’ll just see where things head. BIGBRIGHT was a bit different cause Elkkle and I made that together and I decided I wanted to try get two more people on the track and 6 months later got verses from Duckwrth and E^ST.
And what do you see coming next? I know you hinted that you recorded a few more music videos on your recent trip back to Japan. Is there anywhere or anything you’d like to explore artistically next?
Yep I have an album coming out around May-ish that I’m going to announce properly soon! And yeah a couple more videos filmed in Tokyo. Plus some production work for my friends which I’m excited about!
I think at the moment I’m just trying to become a better songwriter! It’s kind of become this exciting new thing of not just making sounds but also trying to be eloquent and honest with words
The Australian artist is on a roll — but he’s just getting started. In the last few months he’s released two Tasty! Jams, “MOONSTONE” and “BIGBRIGHT,” and their corresponding music videos with collaborators DUCKWRTH, Elkkle, Akurei, Mallrat, and E^ST, and was just featured on Young Franco’ s otherworldly jam “Otherside” –but he’s still got more to offer. Today Golden Vessel gave us “DIZZY” a dreamy pop-synth jam featuring Oscar Key Sung. Additionally, Golden Vessel will be hitting the road with BAYNK, starting tomorrow in Boulder, CO, and performing across North America before hitting the SXSW stage in Austin, TX, so don’t miss out on seeing this golden boy for yourself.
The music video for “DIZZY” is a karaoke-like trip around the streets of Tokyo, featuring Golden Vessel in his classic jumpsuit. He gave a little insight into how he met up with Oscar Key Sung and how the song came about, saying “I’ve been a fan of Oscar’s music ever since I found him on Bandcamp when I was 15. I took a trip to Melbourne in December 2016 to do some writing for my album and managed to get myself along to a htmlflowers concert on my last night there. As chance had it, Oscar jumped up on stage for one of his songs. Turned out he’d been away for 8 months and had just landed in the country that day and came straight to the show. We met after the show and organised to do some writing the next day. We had to use my friend’s bedroom because we couldn’t find a studio, and we only had a few hours before I had to leave for the airport, but we wrote and recorded Dizzy in that time – not many changes were made after the session as it came together so easily.”
You can find “DIZZY” on our Tasty! Jams playlists for February.
Australian artist Golden Vessel just dropped his newest single “MOONSTONE” the other week but he’s already flying in with a music video to complete the mission. Donning a full spacesuit, a handful of moon rocks, and a laser beam, Golden Vessel Elkkle and Akurei stage a moon landing with a bit of a dramatic twist with a special guest appearance from Mallrat.
The video actually has some historical significance to it as well, referencing the disappearance of NASA’s original moon rocks. In 1998, so the story goes, US federal law enforcement launched an investigation into missing moon rocks from one of its original NASA trips into space on Apollo 11. The specimens once brought back to earth in 1969 were distributed across the world in the famous Goodwill Moon Rocks initiative, only to, nearly 30 years later, have mostly vanished or become untraceable.
Golden Vessel used that story as inspiration for the song, discussing it with friends and collaborators Elkkle and Akurei, saying “I started telling them about the stolen moonstones and then morphed it into a metaphor for a conversation we were having earlier about missed opportunities and when we or friends miss out on something that should’ve been in reach (and the frustration around that). The stolen moonstones became the missed opportunities and we all started writing. We tried to sneak a few references from the different stories around stolen moon rocks into the song such as mentioning Joseph Gutheinz who was a NASA special agent tasked with recovering the missing rocks.”
Closing out the year by taking to space isn’t a bad way to celebrate an eventful 2018 for Golden Vessel. His other music video for the colorfully brilliant “BIGBRIGHT” just got nominated for Music Video of the Year from Australia’s Triple J, he’s racked up millions of streams, and has collaborated with Duckwrth, filous, and Emerson Leif. He doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all though, announcing a North American tour for early 2019, kicking off in Boston at the end of January. See the full list of dates below and see more from Golden Vessel on Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, and Instagram.
Jan 31 // Boston, MA @ Sonia
Feb 1 // Washington, DC @ U Street Music Hall
Feb 2 // NYC, NY @ The Bowery Ballroom
Feb 8 // St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
Feb 9 // Chicago, IL @ Chop Shop
Feb 15 // Boulder, CO @ Fox Theater
Feb 16 // Salt Lake City, UT @ Soundwell
Feb 21 // Santa Barbara, CA @ EOS Lounge
Feb 22 // San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Feb 23 // Los Angeles, CA @ Teregram Ballroom
Feb 28 // Portland, OR @ Holocene
Mar 1 // Seattle, WA @ Barboza
Mar 2 // Vancouver, BC @ Celebrities Underground
Golden Vessel returns with an absolutely show-stopping jam.
Featuring Elkkle, E^ST and Duckwrth, Golden Vessel makes his first solo release in nearly a year a joyous, collaborative anthem. Not even a week ago I was writing about Golden Vessel’s production on Emerson Leif’s new single “Twenty2” and wondering when he would release his own solo material. Well, now we know — and it’s filthy. “BIGBRIGHT” seamlessly transitions between vocalists and, even while clocking in at over four minutes, it leaves you wanting more. Duckwrth has an incredible verse at the end of the track that brings out some serious Amine vibes and Golden Vessel’s production is, as always, top fucking tier.
Since I first heard “Shoulders” I was instantly turned on to Golden Vessel’s smooth style. His music seems to effortlessly glide to completion with little left to desire besides a longer runtime. He’s the definition of vibey, which isn’t actually a word, but is definitely the best way to describe his music. You can find “BIGBRIGHT” from Golden Vessel and featuring Elkkle, E^ST, and Duckwrth in our Tasty! Jams playlists for September.
Emerson Leif is back with a new song, “Twenty2”, following his debut single from January.
This new jam from Emerson Leif will have you feeling some type of way, mainly depending on whether or not you’re recently been through a breakup. Golden Vessel, another PB&GJ favorite, helped produce this one after taking a featured spot on Emerson Leif’s debut “Hesitate”. This song shares similar vibes but feels just a wee bit more emotional. Check it out for yourself, you can find “Twenty2” by Emerson Leif on our Tasty! Jams playlists for September.
Peanut Butter & Good Jams 