Hi, Sam from Projekt here. I have a captivating new signee to welcome to the label, VEiiLA! This Russian-by-way-of-Armenia duo creates an alluring blend of downtempo and dreampop infused with late-night sensuality. Today we bring you the digital single “Can’t Forgive Myself” b/w “Another Day” on their Bandcamp page. Side-Line Magazine has the video premiere; VEiiLA perform both songs live at The Boo Cafe (Vanadzor, Armenia). This single advances their Sentimental Craving For Beauty album — available September 8 on digital and as a limited edition (of 500) CD. The album will be Echoes Radio’s September CD of the Month, but that’s a story for another day. Today, I invite you to stream or download VEiiLA’s single at Bandcamp. It’ll be streaming Friday at Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, etc.
— Sam
Selected as Echoes Radio’s September CD of the Month
| VEiiLA is pronounced “Vay-la.” It’s a stylized reference to a Baltic mountain-dwelling demon that lures men into her cave by singing and then devours them. |
Creating beauty and passion out of harrowing despair comes easy for Russians-in-exile VEiiLA. With immaculate electronics, slow rhythms, and female vocals flush with late-night sensuality, the duo of Bes Eirid and Vif Nüte craft an entwining melancholia with devastating existential lyrics.
In anticipation of their Sentimental Craving For Beauty album, VEiiLA reveals two advance tracks with a bare minimalist palette — the stripped down production clears space for the vocals’ hypnotic swirl, murmuring their intimate allegories of universal indifference and lost hope.
“Can’t Forgive Myself” investigates themes of regret. Regret of a specific quality caused by childlike naivety mistaking cynical manipulations of the grown-up world for genuine kindness and decency. Everyone gets to this epiphany when growing up, and almost everyone manages to grow a thick layer of skin — vigilant skepticism with scoffing disdain for the mere idea of purity. But what about those who don’t grow up? Those whose innocent beliefs survive and linger? Those who cherish their immature idealism to the last, forever opposing it to the vulgarity of real life? Well, life is life and sooner or later everyone has to face it. Under the surface of the seemingly unpretentious lounge ballad “Another Day” dwells what may be one of VEiiLA’s gloomiest songs. With melancholic detachment, Vif’s soft vocals rest on a minimal underwater arrangement that forces the ear to pay attention to the desperate lyrics. Revolving thematically around lies, VEiiLA presents lying as the last resort in the game of clinging to life.
Hidden beneath seductive mellow electronics, translucent guitars, soft enthralling percussion, synth bass and tantalizing, alluring vocals dwell the paralyzing vapors of venomous despair and inevitable pain of human existence. All of which is contrasted by a catchy beat and sensual downtempo context.
I’m lying to you
And I’m lying to myself
There’s nothing I can do
There’s nothing to be said
And I’m lying to you
And I’m lying to myself
Cause if we don’t believe
Then we’re already dead
Sentimental Craving For Beauty Track Listing
1. Can’t Forgive Myself
2. I Had A Dream
3. Broken Toy (album version)
4. Another Day
5. Furnace
6. Cool
7. Push The Pedal (album version)
8. Do You Hear Me (album version)
9. Made Of Air
10. Ocean’s Breath
11. Common Decency
12. My Blues
13. Sick To The Bone
https://veiila.bandcamp.com/album/cant-forgive-myself-double-single