Growing up, she was the odd one out…but Helena Gao was taught piano at a very young age and fell in love with jazz and all its madness and beauty, scales to 2-5-1’s and so on but it was when she discovered Logic 9 and the endless possibilities of producing music herself, that she found her identity and sound.
Helena is a blessed musician and on her new single, ‘Beach House’, she mixes the sounds of her piano, bells and hauntingly beautiful violins while she unfolds her intimate yet powerful voice and melody on a brilliant soundscape.
Besides an 8 minute short/long EP that got a great review by Danish media, Soundvenue, no one has ever written about Helena Gao!! In other words: She’s an unsigned gem here to be discovered!
Would love to know your thoughts and I would LOVE to help with anything you need if you’re up for featuring Helena when ‘Beach House’ is out on Thursday November 25th… :
When she hit her early teens, she watched various music channels and was introduced to alternative rock band,Radiohead. She meticulously studied their website and Wikipedia page to find out, that in some ways, they used to be like her: weird, lonely kids, who sought refuge in the creative process of writing music.Playing piano and finding an identity in her artistry helped Helena become proud of the things that strayed from normality instead of feeling embarrassed.
This pride in her individuality is easy to hear in the music, with peculiar and characteristic elements often being accentuated.On November 25ththe independent musician, producer and songwriter takes us on a stroll close to the neighborhood she grew up in on the new self-released single, ‘Beach House’.“
The song is pretty much about my curiosity about upper-class lives. Something I feel a lot of people are interested in due my observation that we’re often hyper aware of what we don’t have but seem to forget what we do have. This unfortunate human trait is the core of the song, and even though the beach house owner is the focus, I think many of us with middle class backgrounds are guilty of ungratefulness as well.
”As a pianist, Helena Gao was brought up in a more traditional jazz setting, practicing everything from scales to 2-5-1’s and so on. It was her piano teacher who encouraged her to start recording and it sparked an instant interest in producing her own music. The endless possibilities and power you had to mold the exact soundscape that you wanted was almost intoxicating. So was the random detours and surprising mistakes that makes the music even more exciting!”
“As a woman, you’re hardly ever encouraged or inspired by your peers to start producing. All the credit lists on Spotify are dominated by male producers. I think producing myself helped me figure out what I want and what I sound like.”‘Beach House’ will be released as a double single including, ‘Wow,You’ve Changed’ -a new version of a song, that was originally released last year with her critically acclaimed debut-EP, ‘Extended Adolescence’
