Welcome back to another artist insight. This week we are featuring Realma, a Serbian-Chinese, an alternative indie artist who just dropped her debut single ‘A hint of pink’. A hint of pink is overall captivating and guaranteed to give you goosebumps. This debut single leaves listeners on the edge of their seats and wanting more. The track giving off a mystic and magical vibe, ‘A hint of pink’ goes onto to talk about the mysteries if songwriting and the hardships that come with it. Realma’s vocals in ‘A hint of pink’ are almost hypnotizing, we are so excited to see what she will produce next and absolutely can't wait for the music video that will be coming out on the fifth of February.
In light of the release of this track, Project Unheard is honoured to ask some question about Realma’s journey so far and what she has planned for her promising and bright future in the music industry.
“What made you want to go with the ‘witchyvibe’?”
Since it's inception, Realma was conceptualised as an audiovisual project with each song based in a different music style/genre with a visual narrative set in a new storyworld. To embody this idea, the name 'Realma' is a punny wordplay on 'realms'. The witchy aspect came about in order to tie in all these disparate worlds. In this way, the songs are like the crystals of a sorceress that helps us gaze into these different story realms. On top of this, many of us on the team are fans of series like Charmed. Personally, in recent years I was more and more interested in the Wicca culture too.
“Describe your music taste and what shapes the songs that you make?”
My music taste is very eclectic. I started studying classical violin since the age of 7 and have been training in Western counterpoint, harmony, musical form, composition and orchestration since my teenage years. However, my parents always played popular music at home, ranging from pop, country, rock, jazz, etc. On top of this, I grew up in two distinct cultural environments - China and Serbia, where I listened to many folkloric forms of music. All these musical topoi shaped the diversity of genres that Realma will capture, but also challenge with postmodern irony. While my debut song is a kind of downbeat and slightly folkish dreampop, the next songs will include elements of film noir, 2000s pop, trip, Christmas music, tango, road-trip music and many more. Finally, I also studied film and drama as my BA, and the aspects of film soundtrack is undeniably there in my music.
“ What advice would you give to someone wanting to start out as a new artist?"
This is very tough as I'm just starting out too, but my main takeaway is to build a community of people organically and be patient. It's very easy to get lost in the social media's numbers game, but what is really more worth it for an artist is building connections - whether with music blogs, playlists or followers. They recently played my debut song on small community radios in Australia and Scotland, two countries across the world I never visited. Sure, these features aren't some huge playlists with millions of streams, but it kept my heart warm to tune in and see the song featured among a diverse selection of independent artists. Another thing I would say is to find your personal angle that is truthful to who you are and just keep going!
"After this single do you plan to release more, no matter the response?"
Oh, YES, definitely! My team and I have so many songs planed - specifically for this year it's 4 of them in total. The next two are being produced as we speak, with their animated music videos being sketched out. The songs will also be reinterpreted as dance-theatre videos, comic booklets and mini-video games, so lots of content coming up! We are also organising for live acoustic versions to be filmed at the National Theatre in Bucharest, Romania, however, there is some delay with that due to the pandemic.
With such a genuine and humble outlook to the industry, Relma is truly on the right path to success, we won't be surprised if one day we see her music in our favourite series or at a pub. Super exciting stuff and we wish her the best of luck, make sure to support her in any way possible.