Atlara has released his debut EP ‘The Lobby’.
Following his recent support from Apple Music on playlists such as New In Pop and New Music Daily, the three track release marks an emotional turning point for the artist.
Speaking of the EP, Altara said: “I’m not that great at expressing my emotions, the past year I’ve felt especially overwhelmed, and I internalized that. May was a bit of a turning point, I think I got so overwhelmed that I was forced to change everything going on in my life. A lot of this EP came from that, and just needed to get it out by writing. It’s really interesting looking back on the project now, because I’ve moved on in so many parts of my life since then that I find it really hard to relate to it. It’s a conflicting feeling, because I know this is what helped me get there, but it’s like holding up a mirror, it makes me sad to think back to that place.
“I am so so proud of ‘The Lobby’, I’ve been waiting for a project like this to find me for what feels like forever. This is just an introduction though, and I want to continue to challenge myself by changing my sound, my look & my artistry. The next project is almost done, it’s very different but it’s also very me. I hope people who find me from this EP and all my future releases will enjoy that ever evolving sound.”
To celebrate his single release, Altara shared with us 5 tracks that influenced ‘The Lobby’.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Spitting Off The Edge Of The World
Production is such an important part of writing for me, the two have to compliment each other to truly make a great record. I love the sound design in this track, you feel like you’re on the edge of a cliff just waiting for it to drop, it’s so perfect for the name. It’s so dynamic too, that fill going into the second chorus is so simple but so perfect. I could talk far too long about the bass too, it feels so alive & like it’s trying to escape through the speakers. I hadn’t really listened to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before, but that whole album is really worth a listen.
Caroline Polachek – So Hot You’re Hurting My feelings
THIS. SONG. IS. SO. PERFECT. The amount of times I’ve met someone so hot that I cannot physically look at them & I’ve never thought of writing a song about that??? It’s just so fun & unserious, it’s exactly what I wanted to take inspiration from when writing new music. For so long I saw writing & attraction as something I had to be somber or brooding about, but I’m not really like that as a person. ‘Somebody To Lose’ was really born from the idea that I wanted to be less serious with my feelings, & the first line was so inspired by this track.
Rawayana – Welcome To El Sur
I was played this song by the very same person I wrote the EP about. We were in Como, just walking around for hours & showing each other music. We ended up going into a bit of a Venezuelan deep dive & as SOON as I heard the intro to this track, I was hooked. Rawayana are one of the coolest bands I’ve ever been shown, their sound is so fluid but also so consistent – I’ve been obsessed with them ever since. This track obviously inspired my track ‘It’s Hitting You, Isn’t It’. I took a bit of a gamble with that one in deciding that I wanted to sing a verse in Spanish (which I had ironically been learning it for somebody else…), I cringe so much hearing so many people jumping on the trend to basically exploit the market a bit. I went back & forth a lot, but I ultimately decided to go ahead with it was to pay homage to that moment in Como. That was something just shared between us, and I wanted that second verse to reflect it. I’m not singing in Spanish because I want to sound cool, it’s a moment in the song that’s again between us, and just for him to understand.
St. Vincent – New York
I love this song for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the production is genius, that intro is so intimate & was a huge inspiration for the final track on my EP, ‘Milan’. I think Antonoff’s style is perfect for a track like this, it’s only just over 2 mins but you go on such a ride. I think it’s potentially his best work yet.The sentiment of it is what really gets me though, how places can completely change for you due to the context of somebody else. The memories you make there. I love walking, and I’ve spent literal days wandering around London, but exploring it with an architect felt like I was seeing it again for the first time. The Barbican is my favorite building in London, and I never really understood why until the context behind that style of architecture was explained to me & suddenly it all made sense. It’s not been the same since, but that’s not a bad thing. I might sound a bit strange talking about architecture in a music blog, but where I am is so integral to my writing inspiration. I’ve always been drawn to Paris when I want to write, I’m lucky to have family I can stay with, but now I understand why I feel I write so well there, I can sit down on almost any beautiful street, listen to my demos & get inspired by what’s around me.
Ella Fitzgerald – Just One Of Those Things
Okay hear me out… The first time I heard this song was when Helena Bonham Carter sang it on ‘The Crown’. It was a really heartbreaking scene, trivializing over 20 years of a relationship to ‘just one of those things’. What I love about this song though, is that Ella Fitzgerald’s version is so fun and light hearted. I struggle to make sense of how much people mean to me sometimes, how I ended up writing an EP about someone I happened to bump into at a hotel lobby in Milan that I had no right to be staying in, yet we still end up meeting in London after spending no more than a couple hours in person. It was so out of the blue, but at the same time it didn’t feel like that, it just felt natural. The lens you chose to look though can change the scene dramatically, the same lyrics in both these songs have two completely different meanings. I related to the first so much more at the start, but I didn’t feel sad about it for long. I’m grateful for it, and it pushed me to understand my relationship with myself even more & now I love listening to the second.
Listen to Altara music influences:
Stream Atlara ‘The Lobby’ via Spotify: