Music
Stephan Folkes tugs at the soul with new single “Is this paradise?”
Stephan Folkes’ new single “Is this paradise?,” is one that stops you in your tracks. “Is this paradise?” the evocative lead single from his upcoming album Hazard, is a moving and thought-provoking meditation on loss, remembrance, and hope. Folkes weaves an all-encompassing landscape that’s closer to stepping into memory than pressing play on a song. His voice, sweet and rough, threads through the production with a subdued urgency, summoning the kind of questions that don’t require answers.
What elevates this track is that it feels heavy with emotion and the way it’s conveyed with maturity. Whereas some might have leaned into melodrama here, Folkes finds space for every note, every word a willingness to let you sit in the ache, if not drown in it. It’s a musical slow burn, gorgeously held in check but profoundly felt, like the glow of an old photograph that you never quite have the nerve to hide away. The lyrics do the heavy lifting with grace, telling a story of someone clutching the past not from weakness but from preference. There’s suffering in the mix here, yes, but there’s also power, a reminder through recollection to heal. At a time when culture craves authenticity, Folkes provides it in spades, peeling away the slickness to reveal something real, something human.
“Is this paradise?” is at once as intimate as a journal entry and as anthemic as anything else out there. It’s music designed not just to be heard but felt in the quiet spaces, the late nights, the silent drives, and the moments when we reach for what has been lost and touch something sacred in our longing to remember. In this debut, Stephin Laing introduces himself as an artist and offers listeners a hand through the fog of grief, lighting the way toward a brighter place. If Hazard keeps this up, that will not merely be an album. It will be a turning point.
Artist Spotlight
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds a new direction through Ghost of Panama
Rearranging a song that carries six decades of cultural weight is a creative challenge, but Ghost of Panama approaches “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with clear purpose. The rock band radically reworks Bob Dylan’s counter-culture hit, reshaping its identity while keeping its rebellious spirit. It’s a tribute to musical heritage and a statement of artistic independence all in one.
This new interpretation is very much shaped by the production, made at Ghost of Panama’s home studio in West London. The setting allows an intimate approach to reinterpreting a familiar song and lets the group engage directly with the material, taking it in a new artistic direction.
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” centers on the tension between conservation and transformation. Ghost of Panama is true to the song’s rebellious spirit without adding to its legacy, and this approach gives the release an adventurous feel, grounded in countercultural energy but driven by a desire to see what the composition can become in a different musical context.
Their version of this 60-year-old classic shows that respecting a song’s history can also mean breaking the rules and finding new ways to express its spirit. Fundamentally, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” presents Ghost of Panama as artists who want to engage with the past without being tied to it. The release’s strongest identity is a familiar heritage reimagined through a singularly forward-looking creative vision.
Artist Spotlight
“NO MORE” by Amanda Holley connects healing, awakening, and survival
“NO MORE“ carries that kind of emotional weight, and some songs feel like they come from lived experience but reach for something bigger. Amanda Holley blends R&B and soul, turning a lifetime of survival into a vision of healing, awakening, and the determination to move beyond what caused the pain.
“NO MORE“ is a healing anthem for people who have gone through bad experiences and reached a place of higher awareness, but it’s also an emotionally charged protest. The duality is introspective and outward-looking at the same time, turning personal survival into a broader declaration that some experiences, conditions, or cycles should end.
Holley had a premonition of the song six months before the world went into global shutdown. In the vocal booth, working out melodies with her collaborators, she pictured people in the streets. Those images were hard to imagine at the time, but subsequent events would make them painfully familiar.
“NO MORE“ is given a particularly contemplative underpinning by the context. The identity of R&B and soul leaves room for emotion. The song’s themes link survival, awakening, resistance, and the need for change. Amanda Holley is an artist using music to process personal endurance and a broader sense of social awakening. It’s got a complicated significance, and its release feels like a glimpse of a moment when personal intuition and public reality collided in an unexpected way.
Photo Credit: Yulia Shusharina
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