I$kra & about her ‘Hylaea’ album

In case you haven’t come here from the tracks released already, you’ll get the chance to

explore the world of “Hyalaea” even more - so let’s tell you a bit more about it.

The name originates from the type of butterfly moth on the cover art, „Hylaea Prasinaria”;

The word itself refers to the meaning of ‘hylaea’ to be from Greek „a forest” hi-lay-uh, ancient forests of Greece or the Amazonian forest.

What is Hylaea?

Away from those, it’s also my first exploration of sounds from couple of years ago when I started to be intrigued with it.

Driven by love towards various different types of music, this is my intuitive take on sound making.

My main focus was on showing the build up of sound and letting it all come together in a cohesive matter that envokes more of a feeling of a soul journey filled with both constant energy build up and a slight sense of nostalgia.

What Genre & energy is the album?

The music that I create definitely holds elements from different genres of electronic music that I personally like to listen to, such as a little bit of trance, acid, psy, tribal and hard funky grooves, but for me to categorize it into one genre or sub-genre would be quite difficult.

I like to refer to my music production in general as happy techno for now, accent always on

uplifting energy, me pasting all of these elements and ideas into a musical collage until it sounds good to me.

In most cases I like to use my vocals for my tracks and I try not to copy anyone’s work, authenticity is really important to me and the whole “building your own sound” thing.

As artist we definitively have to get ourselves out there and try different things, play with different sounds without any mental limitations to what your capabilities could or should be.

There will be mention of the whole “train your ears” thing with us. So far it seems as if people complain about wanting something different.

People will always complain about wanting something different, it is a given. I think it is important to a certain extend to listen to those desires or figure out what could they be in these times that we are in, what motivates the people the most at the moment and what they want to hear or experience next.

If you look at it, music throughout the years and all the different ways in which it was being

created it was still an echo. of the state of the world and people at that given time

Now that being said I could jump to the other thing that you mentioned, which was the whole “train your ears” thing.

There will be multiple tracks, do you know the final number?

It took some time for me to pick out which ones from my work I liked the most, but so far I am

sticking to a list of 9 tracks for this first project of mine.

Is there anything you would add to someone completely new to this type of music?

Just have an open mind and listen, concentrate to what you are listening to. Regardless of it being my music or somebody else’s that you are unfamiliar to, a genre that you never explored before, a weird song that your friend wants to show you, always give it a chance.

You never know what gems out there could have a beautiful impact on you. I am a firm believer that there is no bad type of music necessarily, within a certain genre you could find both bad and good examples of it.

Reason why I am saying this at all is because I met people throughout my life that would never give a chance to a different type of music just because they are not used to it or the genre has certain (stupid) stereotypes attached to it, which for me is quite sad. So don’t be like that, go explore and share some good music with your loved ones.

Watch the album unfold & let us know which one is your favorite.

This was Highlight:ED & you can stay updated on posts as we go by following on Instagram @wearenycto

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