The debut single of my music project Euphemia Rise is also the story of two collaborations. The first between me and Mel Benedichuk, who provided the extra vocals for this track. And secondly the collaboration with visual artist Itzel Bernal for the official video of the single.
Listen to the album sing reading the text.
After starting Euphemia Rise in March 2020 “Farewell to Greatness” was the first song I worked on. I wasn’t entirely happy about the second part because I felt it needed polyphonic vocals. So I let the song rest and started looking for a singer to collaborate with. Soon afterwards, I discovered Mel’s vocals via her Instagram stories. I instantly liked her voice and imagined it should blend well with mine. Fortunately, she accepted and was excited about the song.
We started working together in summer, first via covers of mutual favorite songs. This was great fun and it taught us a lot about how to use our voices together. Notably “Every You Every Me,” “Aerials,” and “Without You I’m Nothing” were incredibly helpful and smoothened the path to work together on the vocals for “Farewell to Greatness”. These were recorded in two weeks, and only six weeks after we started working together. As I imagined, the two voices in the section starting with the lyrics “I used to care but it killed me” are stronger than at first, when I did it with just one voice. Hearing it again, I love the power and emotion. It’s quite amazing and still feels great that we got to such gratifying results in such a short time.
The collaboration with Itzel Bernal started in a most spontaneous way. I discovered her work after she had watched one of my live streams. After I discovered her Instagram videos, she said she’d be happy to make more, and was enthusiastic about contributing to the video. Some first material she provided instantly convinced me that this would work out beautifully. We talked some more and exchanged ideas, soon found ourselves on the same wavelength. She was very creative, and intuitive about what kind of images I needed. I didn’t need to do much, any ideas I shared were swiftly responded with footage that was exactly the kind I was looking for. In only two weeks she had filmed tons of great material, more than enough for a 3-minute music video. I just needed to cut and mount it into a coherent visual story. It was an amazing and prolific collaboration, and with a result to be proud of.
Therefore, if you have enjoyed listening to the song and reading about the background, I invite you to also step into the eerie and beautiful universe of the video. Enjoy!
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