Plume Girl - In the End We Begin (Mappa)

What Your Ears Say & The Cover Looks Like

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What We SAy

Another great release hidden away from the world in the Bandcamp enclave on Mappa; the genre melting debut from Texas based dreamer & reality tunnel breacher Plume Girl, aka Sowmya Somanath - a Hindustani classical singer/composer who weaves her vocal magic through the Hindustani folk past & twisted modern pop present, imagining a fairly shared, culturally harmonious, artistically adventurous future as she goes.

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What The Release Notes Say

Already in its title, Plume Girl’s debut thoroughly lets things go and takes them in – all at once. “In the End We Begin” is the first solo full-length from Sowmya Somanath, a Hindustani classical singer/composer and half of alt-pop duo Felt Out. Plume Girl’s music takes inspiration from the semi-regular musical form of the rāga (translated as ‘tinting’), invoking mood and atmosphere, each rāga thought to have its own distinct nature and personality, brought to life through improvisation. String swells and Somanath’s searching vocalisations envelop every track’s own blissful chamber. Exploring imagined binaries along the way — eastern vs. western, traditional vs. experimental, acoustic vs. electronic, Sowmya sees music as a curious dialogue between divine Self and an invisible reality. Beneath the illusion of a chromatic world, there remains a blissful oneness.

Plume Girl’s songs sit between ambient Hindustani music and emotionally-encumbered pop. In front of backdrops comprising sundrenched drones or glitches, sketched out beats, and criss-crossing glissandi or flutes, Somanath both murmurs intimately and spirals upwards into soaring choruses. The lyrics ponder innermost thoughts, never more literally than on the blissful emo folk closing track: ‘In my heart I know / what’s in my heart / I know what’s in my…’

“When I began writing this music, I was fresh off of an experience that completely twisted my reality,” explains Somanath. It was the end of a years-long relationship, and the blossoming of a long-buried love hidden in plain sight: “a best friend of a decade, my musical partner, someone who had always seen me completely…At once, I felt grief and loss. At once, excitement and love.”

CREDITS
Written and recorded at home by Plume Girl
plumegirl.bandcamp.com
Mixed by Plume Girl and Walter Nichols

“swimming lessons” recorded in Sonic Ranch with Maria Im (violin), Tamir Barzilay (drums), John Arndt (piano), and Tim Lefebvre (bass)
Flute in “alone, all one” and “i know” by Walter Nichols

Artwork by Milagros Lupotti (Elfy)
www.instagram.com/eeeeelllfffyyyyyyyyy/

Mastered by Adam Badí Donoval
abdonoval.com

Words by Tristan Bath
Photography by Zoltan Czakó

Released by mappa as MAP043 in 2023

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Fore further explorations through global sounds take a trip with the Slow World Playlist