Tomas Barfod – ‘Busy Baby’ feat. Nina K

Recently released worldwide, the second album of Tomas Barfod, ‘Love Me’, showcases an impeccable new song, ‘Busy Baby’, which also comes with an eerie new video thrown in just to spoil us. The album is available on Secretly Canadian and the video was directed by Laerke – Barfod himself says he thinks ‘the video is beautiful’. He’s absolutely right.

‘Busy Baby’ is smooth and instrumentally complex while giving the impression of being completely effortless, as though it is simply a few instruments being played at the same time rather than the reality of the deep musical story being woven. The notes are soft and low, cushioning the vocals and allowing them to become the focus of the song. The beat is deepened so it doesn’t take attention away from them, though the instrumental work creates an unearthly atmosphere.

The vocals are just beautiful. Nina K possess the operatic and physical beauty of Lana Del Ray, with a clearer, stronger tone, expressing her voiced emotions with more confidence and abandoning the unnecessary embellishments. It’s probably because, unlike Del Ray, her disproportional upper lip doesn’t get in the way. Her voice carries the lyrics like a gust of wind, bleeding out every bit of potential for beauty the words have and gifting them to audience, unblemished. Her voice shifts from smoothly low to flawlessly high without a single crack. It’s a shame that her name is the second listed on the track.

The video is abstractly artistic, mirroring the artwork for the album on which it features. It looks undeniably simplistic, but this is deceiving – an immense amount of work and thought has gone into allowing her mouth to remain still while her other features warp and shift, for creative effect. Nina K follows every note, making it seem as if this immaculate rendition of the song is how it naturally is. She and Tomas Barfod create a stunning harmony of sounds and singing, as they have done in previous works such as ‘Pulsing’, which notched up an impressive 320,000 plays on Soundcloud and secured support from the Guardian to Perez Hilton, as well as a co-sign from the esteemed Gruff Rhys on Record Store Day release ‘True To You’. Their talent is a rare thing.

Tomas Barfod will be playing select and exclusive shows this summer, so if you’re looking for a moving musical experience, try and catch one of these:

21 June 2014 – London, UK Best Kept Secret Festival

27th June 2014 – Berlin, DE – Arena Escobar

19th July 2014 – Paris, FR – Secret Location

14th August – Copenhagen, DK – Store Vega w/ SOHN

15th August 2014 – Oslo, NO – Jazzfestival @ Bla

23rd August 2014 – Barcelona, ES – Razzmatazz

7th November 2014 – Reykjavik, IS – Iceland Airwaves

Catch the song here:

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