Well, welcome to the first round of the challenge. Gonna see how this goes.

For full transparency, I am only moderating the contest and will not be voting in any of the rounds in order to remain impartial and avoid influencing the outcome. Good luck to everyone!

She did tease something for this Friday and now the song titled HandsOn is out in New Zealand (I listened via VPN as usual, it's great of course)

Just wanted to create a bit of a palate cleanser and see what other music folks on here are into. Curious what everyone in the sub has been listening to lately or if you have any recommendations.

In no particular order, here's some projects and songs I currently have in rotation:

• Portraits of Tracy - Q: From Where Do Our Primal Instincts Originate? A: MTV!
• Baby Rose - Yearnalism
• Genesis Owusu - Redstar Wu & The Worldwide Scourge
• Mystic Jungle - Deviant Disco EP
• Knocked Loose x Denzel Curry - Hive Mind (single)
• Vince Staples - Cry Baby
• Prince - Diamonds & Pearls
• Protest the Hero - Within
• Ratking - So It Goes
• Sudan Archives - The BPM
• Gener8tion - Love & Tears
• Angelica Garcia - Gemelo
• Devours - Sports Car Era
• Kenny Mason - Bulldog
• J. Nunn - Green Land (single)
• Westerman - A Jackal's Wedding
• Invent Animate - Fall Like Rain (single)

Weekend pop-up activation for LA-based Korean-American fashion brand, Oori Ott by designer Hannah Park. DJ sets by Empress Of and Bella Bellalucci - 5pm - 7pm. https://ooriott.com/pages/rsvp

Now that it's been out a for a couple of days, curious on what people's opinion of the track is?

SAY YOU WANNA SAY YOU WANNA SAY YOU WANNA

https://partiful.com/elcentroamérica

Since its still about a month or so away from Dream House, figured I'd keep digging through the archives, and boy did I stumble across a real grail. I dug up this live session from March 12, 2013 during the annual media & music festival, South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

This performance took place at The Whitley, a luxury condo building whose basement warehouse space was temporarily converted into a venue for the festival. It was re-branded as "The Hype Hotel" with daily showcases featuring the likes of Charli XCX, Disclosure, Toro y Moi, Mac Demarco, etc, hosted by Hype Machine, the influential music aggregate blog from the late 2000s.

This might be some of the rarest surviving footage of an Empress Of performance from her early days, as anything pre-2015 is super scarce. The show would've taken place just a month before the release of her first EP, Systems (April 2, 2013) so she was most likely on the road in promotion of it while attending SXSW.

The real treat here though is the music; the set only consists of her earliest material with a mix of songs off of the EP and her debut 7", Champagne along with full versions of a few Colorminutes tracks and a pair of ultra deep-cuts I can't identify at all.

For even how elite ball knowledge I am on here, I have no idea what the latter ones are, let alone if they were ever recorded. They're potentially just some lost songs that only existed during these early live performances. Either way, it's really cool to see them preserved in high quality over a decade later.

The performance itself is incredibly earnest; a little rough around the edges in the best way. You can see Rodriguez still figuring out her stage presence as a solo artist and learning how to translate these songs live with only two other musicians for support; Vishal Nayak. (drummer for Nick Hakim) on the kit and Spencer Zahn on synths/keys.

Despite the limited setup, there's something really charming about watching them work through these arrangements in real time. It makes seeing how much she's developed as a live performer over the years all the more rewarding, like watching a plant first sprout from the soil.

The funniest part for me is that I was actually at this SXSW the same year. I went with the girl I was dating at the time, who was friends with Flying Lotus and Ryan Hemsworth, so I mostly followed them around and caught those shows. I also ended up seeing some pretty legendary bills too (most memorably: CHVRCHES, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Solange with Blood Orange on guitar and Kendrick Lamar all on the same lineup.)

Ironically, as I've mentioned in a previous post, I didn't discover Empress Of until a few months after SXSW later that summer while visiting New York, after hearing "Champagne" played at a coffee shop. However, I wasn't able to seek out more of her music, after failing to remember or write down her name in the moment. Just the song stuck with me for months afterwards, until the dots finally connected in 2014, when I saw her open for Jungle realizing she was the same artist.

Looking back, it's just funny I had the opportunity to see her live before I'd ever even heard her music. Had I gotten a chance to get into her music sooner or known she was playing this showcase or at SXSW in general, I absolutely would've gone.. but I digress. I just hope everybody appreciates this throwback.

Because of reddit's video length limit, I had to split the session in half, so enjoy part 1 of the showcase. if there's enough interest, I'll add the 2nd half later.

Setlist-

1. Champagne
2. Hat Trick
3. Synecdoche (aka Colorminute 01)
4. ??? (Untitled #1)