Thank you Herbs! I wish that for you too! 🍀🌻

Congrats on your first hit 🖤

banger

Aw, thank you! You are all so kind 🖤🖤🖤

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Boy Harsher - Pain

This month I’ve basically been running on 0% energy, so I didn’t manage to post my entry earlier. I also had some obligations that were kind of sitting on my chest the whole time, so tonight I finally found a moment to squeeze this in before the BJSC end.

This is actually my favourite song by Boy Harsher, because it’s also the very first one I ever heard from them, many years ago. Back then I wasn’t really into electronic music at all. I always associated it with festival crowds at 5 a.m. and that point where everything is on like 5% battery, your legs are actively plotting against you, and you’re trying to remember how on earth you’ll drag yourself back home. I never really understood people who would just bounce in place for hours to one beat. In my head, they had to be on something, because how else 😭

Anyway… Boy Harsher completely opened a different dimension for me. And it happened on the very first listen of this song.

It made me feel kind of “high” in a way I can’t properly explain, completely sober, completely normal, which honestly felt like the most ironic twist of all. I used to think people only really listened to electronic music at festivals while being, well… let’s say “assisted” in some way, just vibing to a single beat for hours. And then I randomly stumbled onto a song that somehow made me feel like I was the one in that state without ever having taken anything in my life.

I don’t even know if this makes sense or if anyone will get what I mean. I’m not trying to justify old stereotypes or anything just being honest that I genuinely didn’t connect with electronic music at all until Boy Harsher flipped that switch for me.

Maybe I’m overthinking it and talking too much about everything I shouldn’t, instead of just posting the song. It just felt a bit weird to post the song on the very last day with nothing written, and the only thing I really know is what I already experienced.

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MYDY - Terrace of 57th

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BUCK-TICK - Dress

Sending hype to this one!

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BALTHAZARD, Dyana - FADE

BALTHAZARD is a Swiss-born, London-based musician, producer and DJ whose sound draws heavily from Soul, Jazz, Funk, Disco and 70s/80s Pop, with influences ranging from Michael Jackson and Phil Collins to Giorgio Moroder and Quincy Jones.

Dyana is a Romanian-born, UK-based singer-songwriter and instrumentalist. Music has been part of her life from an early age, her father is a drummer and she discovered the piano as a child. She moved to London in 2021 to study music and pursue her career as an artist. Since releasing her first single in 2019, she has developed an alt-pop sound centred around emotion, symbolism and storytelling.

The two artists came together for FADE, a sleek and atmospheric collaboration released on BALTHAZARD's 2025 project The Sand & The Sea. The song combines his polished electronic production with Dyana's intimate vocals, creating a dreamy, soulful track with a distinctly late-night feel. FADE is the sixth track on the seven-song project and runs for 3:38.

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Kalandra - Let Me Be Open

Let me be open
And ready to receive
Bring back the joy
I used to have as a kid

Let me unravel
The threads I've pulled too tight
Fear is a whisper
That lingers in my mind

Let me be open
And ready to receive
Bring back the joy
I used to have as a kid

Help me remember
How wonder feels inside
Feels like my shadow
Needs a place to hide

Let me be open
And ready to receive
Bring back the joy
I used to have as a kid

Out of the silence
A softer voice appears
Reminding me gently
Not to be ruled by fear

🤍

MOTHER

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Nicole Sabouné - Healing You

Nicole Sabouné is a Swedish singer-songwriter, born in 1991 in Sölvesborg and raised in Lund. She currently lives in Stockholm.

She began her music career in 2012 and first caught the attention of a wider Swedish audience through her participation in The Voice. From the very beginning, she stood out for her distinctive vocals and somewhat unconventional musical sensibility and aesthetic.

Healing You is taken from her recently released album, titled ANA. If you think the title ANA is a reference to a woman, you're mistaken, and I think you'll find the story behind Nicole and her own ANA quite fascinating, so I'd really love for you to give it a read.

The title ANA (أنا) actually means "I" in Arabic. And that simple word carries the entire concept of the album: Who am I? Where do I come from? And how much does my heritage define who I am?

Nicole grew up in Sweden in a family where her father was of Lebanese descent. However, she wasn't really aware of that part of her family history during her childhood.

Her father spoke French, and for a long time Nicole believed he was French. She thought of herself as half-Swedish, half-French.

It wasn't until she met her paternal grandmother that she began discovering that her family actually came from Lebanon. Her grandmother spoke Arabic, which was one of Nicole's first real clues that there was an entire part of her heritage she knew almost nothing about.

What's particularly interesting is that her father didn't want to talk about his past and had kept his Lebanese background a secret. According to Nicole, he refused to speak Arabic and never really taught her either French or Arabic, so neither language became part of her upbringing.

In a later interview, Nicole admitted that she felt angry with him because of this, feeling as though an important part of her identity had been kept from her. She subsequently became increasingly interested in exploring her roots, learning Arabic and asking her father questions, but even then, he remained reluctant to talk about it. She tried to understand why he was so distant from his own heritage, but never received a complete explanation.

At some point, she decided to stop waiting for her father to tell her his story and instead discover the country her family came from for herself. In 2024, she visited Lebanon for the very first time.

During her stay, Nicole met several members of her extended family, including her aunt and uncle, with whom she has since developed particularly close relationships. The entire experience was deeply emotional and inspiring for her, eventually leading her to create the introspective album ANA.

When I stumbled upon ANA a few days ago, I genuinely thought it was one of the most beautiful albums I'd heard in years. I honestly can't remember the last time an album affected me quite so deeply, and what's even more interesting is that I hadn't even known the story behind it at the time. The closing moments of the album, featuring a man reciting something in Arabic, are particularly moving.

While working on ANA, Nicole also wanted to involve her father. She asked him if he could record something in Arabic that she might potentially use in one of the songs.

He said he would think about it and Nicole wasn't expecting much. Then, one day, while she was out Christmas shopping, she received a voice message from him. She opened it and heard her father reciting a poem he had written himself, in Arabic. But it wasn't just any poem. It was his poem about his love for Lebanon.

He spoke about how beautiful his homeland had once been and how much it had been destroyed. The poem also expressed hope that one day it might recover, while acknowledging that it might never be quite the same again.

Nicole later described in an interview just how deeply the recording affected her. She said she literally stood there crying, completely overwhelmed by what she had just heard.

For a moment, she thought that perhaps this was finally the beginning of a conversation between her and her father about Lebanon. But that wasn't what happened. He simply sent her the recording and asked her to let him know if it didn't sound right. And that's how Dad's Poem (شعر أبي) came to be.

This album, which includes Healing You, is Nicole's attempt to discover and reconnect with the ANA within herself. As for Healing You specifically, she described it in a Swedish interview as her love letter to Lebanon. I chose Healing You as my BJSC entry because it genuinely touched me so deeply the very first time I heard it. I honestly don't have the words to describe just how beautiful this song is to me.

I probably won't be entering the same artists twice, so I'd really encourage you all to take some time to discover her album ANA and get to know the story behind it. It's genuinely fascinating on so many different levels, and I hope you'll find something special in it too.