Sofia Gillani | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: That is Sophia Gilani and the brand new single of Vulnerability, And I believe we have Sofia on the line with us via WhatsApp. Sofia, are you there?

0:09 Speaker 2: Hi? Hello, I'm here. Thank you so much for having me.

0:12 Speaker 1: Absolutely welcome back to the show. The last time that we had you on, I think we were I think you had just released wake Up. Does that make sense?

0:21 Speaker 3: Yep?

0:21 Speaker 1: Yep.

0:22 Speaker 3: Yes, I've just released wake Up, my first album, my first single to my new album that's coming out really really exciting.

0:28 Speaker 2: Have I loved the response that's happened so far?

0:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent, excellent. So I really like this track Vulnerability. The first thing, well, two things I noticed about it right away as it's First of all, it's got kind of a to me anyway. It has kind of a summertime vibe, which I like because that's my favorite time of year. And as we move into spring here, I enjoy that. I mean, that was That's what I hear in it. But also, but I think part of the reason I hear that is it's also very sort of and I noticed this with some of your other tracks too, it's very sort of stripped down.

0:59 Speaker 1: There's not a lot going on in terms of well, I shouldn't put it that way, but it's it's very you know, it's like you can clearly hear all the percussion and it's very sort of it's not overproduced in that sense. Uh do you know what? You know what I'm trying to say?

1:14 Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah, I mean I wanted to keep it, you know, clear to the message, simplistic. I want it to be just really a banger, if that makes sense. I want to listen to music. I want to make music that I want to listen to really, and you're right, I mean, it definitely is. Even though it is quite a raw track, it is definitely one with a summer vibe. I love some of the most as well. I'm enjoying the sunshine right now.

1:37 Speaker 2: During this interview. But I want it to be quite lighthearted, quite you know.

1:41 Speaker 3: That's why the beats, you know, upbeat, but with that like simplistic, down to earth message.

1:47 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Is that something that you try to go out of your way to do with a lot of because I feel like a lot of your work is like that. It's not it's not super overproduced as not, you know, so much going on where you almost kind of get distracted from the vocal, you know, like a lot of modern music is like that. But I feel like a lot of your I haven't listened everything necessarily, but I've listened to a lot of it and on your I'm looking at your SoundCloud right now, in fact, and I feel like a lot of it is like that.

2:12 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, less is more, really, And I feel like I'm quite a perfectionist when it comes to music, so you know, adding too much, I feel like it just complicates from what I'm trying to do in the first place. And you know, everyone kind of worries that, oh, is it commercial, is it relatable?

2:29 Speaker 2: D NA DA?

2:30 Speaker 3: But honestly, as long as it just sounds good to me, it doesn't need to be overproduced, doesn't need to have all these unnecessary effects, because I also wanted to hit just as well in performances and live.

2:43 Speaker 1: Right, That's true, And it does make sense if it's not overproduced in the studio, then when you're trying to replicate that live, it's a little less a little less daunting in some ways. Right, It's almost it's almost less to worry about in that sense.

2:56 Speaker 3: I would think, Yeah, I mean, you know, when people come to my shows, I want them to, you know, get what they get what they want essentially, and I want them to have this overduced song that has like ten thousand harmonies all over it, and then performance and it's like one.

3:13 Speaker 2: Vocal and it's a bit more slower.

3:15 Speaker 3: So yeah, I wanted my music to be it's easy to listen to a bad thing.

3:21 Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I just I songwrite all of it myself.

3:25 Speaker 3: I'm very independent. I have foot in every single part of the process. I me and my producer, we just don't like to, you know, try too hard on one track and then overthink it before it releases.

3:35 Speaker 1: Right right when you do You ever run into a situation where you're in the studio, you're recording, and something begins to sort of become too dense and you have to say, no, we're kind of going in the wrong direction with this. We're putting too much on it. We need to kind of strip this back a little bit.

3:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.

3:54 Speaker 3: I mean with the new album coming out, it's my first ever album, so we wanted to construct it in a way that was that reflected my musical journey. I've started quite young and so looking at all the songs individually we thought were great, but some of them, like some of them didn't sound coherent at first, like towards the messaging, some of them sounded maybe more some more overproduced than others, and we really did have to strip it back to what is the message that we want to convey with this album?

4:21 Speaker 3: Why do we want wake up to start it? You know, how have I progressed so far? How do I show that? How do I show you know, the Sophia Galani that I am today in comparison to who I was a few years ago with songs.

4:33 Speaker 2: That were even more stripped back because I was just learning.

4:36 Speaker 1: Right, No, that makes sense. So the new album, when is the new album out?

4:41 Speaker 2: It's coming out at the end of May.

4:44 Speaker 3: We we've had to push it back a few times, but that's just just because similar to what I just said before, actually we were just reevaluating and reassessing. But also it's going to be coming on vinyl, which is really really exciting.

4:55 Speaker 2: So we've been figuring out the distribution of that.

4:59 Speaker 1: Is is vinyl still very important over there? I know that in America. I think it was a few years ago, might have been twenty twenty three, or twenty twenty four, it was the first time since the advent of CDs that vinyl actually outsold CDs. That's how the resurgence has been here. Is it like that where you are.

5:19 Speaker 3: Definitely, I mean more people my age are definitely wanting to have, you know, a product in their hands, have something meaningful to them because I feel like, you know, with streaming services, love it, but you know, sometimes it can feel like this weird numbers game where you want people to listen to it so that you know, you feel seen. And I just kind of wanted my song to be in that, my very first one anyway, to be in that product so people have something from me, so it feels personal. And also I feel like not a lot of independent artists are taking that risk, taking that risk to make vinyl tet their blood, sweat and tears and you know, distributing it and getting it made and all that, which in itself is a tricky process.

5:56 Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I want people to have that vinyl.

6:00 Speaker 3: And it's actually available for pre order right now on my band camp, which is really exciting.

6:04 Speaker 1: Oh excellent. I'm glad you mentioned band camp too, because band camp is such a great I'm a big advocate for band Camp, and I don't Yeah, yeah, Well, the thing that I always say, and we might have even talked about this before, because I've talked about this with a number of guests, is how if you download, if you purchase and download music from band Camp, you're actually getting a higher quality file than say if you're just streaming it on YouTube or even Spotify. You really get the best possible product that you can as far as a download, if you get it from band Camp.

6:33 Speaker 1: So I'm a big advocate for that.

6:35 Speaker 3: Definitely me too, especially since I don't know, maybe this is just a personal opinion, but Spotify isn't really hitting it for me nowadays.

6:42 Speaker 2: I feel like, you know.

6:44 Speaker 3: There's so many there's so many like independent artists that I'm missing out on Spotify, and Spotify doesn't really benefit independent artists as much as say band Camp does, where you know you can actually help the artists, you get better quality, like you said, and it just feels like more of a contribution to the music industry worth Spotify. It feels like, you know, everyone's weirdly competing. You know, you have to splash out on adverts and campaigns, and you know what, I mean, it's such a convolutive process.

7:08 Speaker 2: So yeah, massive advocate of band camp as well.

7:10 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now so is wake Up? Wake Up will be the first track that opens the album? I as soon because the album is called wake Up as you said.

7:20 Speaker 3: It's actually called Reconceptualized, but wake Up is the first single on it.

7:23 Speaker 1: Yes, Oh okay, gotcha? Gotcha? And uh, how many tracks are going to be on the album? How many songs?

7:29 Speaker 2: Thirteen?

7:30 Speaker 1: Thirteen? Wow?

7:32 Speaker 3: We put a lot on it. We were like, you know what, We're just going to do this one album. There's not going to be like any DeLux. We're not messing around. It's one album, you know, just for you.

7:41 Speaker 2: You know.

7:41 Speaker 1: Oh great, okay, okay. And then so will that include all of the singles that you've released up to now or are there some that won't be on the album?

7:53 Speaker 3: Yeah? I think there's around three or four that I've already released, but there's a lot of new stuff on there. I mean, my genre is part but I'd like to mix pop sometimes with what I'm listening to, whether it be R and B or drill or garage. So it's really a mix of old and new. And you know, me trying some new things in my production, et cetera, et cetera.

8:11 Speaker 1: Right, excellent, excellent. And then have you been playing live? Have you been touring?

8:17 Speaker 3: Yes, we've been doing a lot of performances recently. Actually literally two days ago, just played not in Hill Art's Club, which was really cool in London.

8:27 Speaker 2: It was sold out, really cool. And on the thirty first of May.

8:32 Speaker 3: At the end of this month, we'll actually be going to Ireland to play in a festival at Waterford near Dublin, which is cool.

8:39 Speaker 1: Oh, very good, very good. I always say festivals are the best because not only oh yeah, well, not only does it get you in front of a huge audience and it's a great way to build your fan base and rapidly, you know, but also too just the contacts that you make, you know, with other industry people at a festival. It's it's really invaluable and definitely can be very very helpful. And then will you be releasing uh, because I know you've got you've got some videos. Will you be releasing videos with the album for these songs?

9:12 Speaker 2: Yes, we will.

9:13 Speaker 3: We've got visuals for a song on the album called Don't Forget Yourself, which are in the process of being edited, and you know, even after the album's released, we've still got visuals that we're planning to work on, including because the album is called Reconceptualized, the song Reconceptualized is going.

9:28 Speaker 2: To get its own visuals soon as well.

9:29 Speaker 1: Oh very cool.

9:31 Speaker 3: You know, love being creative in every single form of it, whether it be songwriting, singing, playing festivals, and then being a director behind the scenes.

9:40 Speaker 1: You know what I mean, right right? Tell me about the title. I'm curious about the title Reconceptualized. Why why did you choose that?

9:47 Speaker 2: Yeah?

9:48 Speaker 3: So, I mean we've played around with a lot of titles, including like Pieces of Me. But the reason why reconceptualize kind of stuck is because not only is it not a very frequently used word, but it kind of encapsulates what I was trying to do with my album. I started music at twelve, and since then I've been going through ups and downs, and really at this point, now I'm eighteen, I'm rethinking what it means to be Sophia Gane, what it means to make music, because I definitely songwrite and articulate myself a lot better than I did back then.

10:17 Speaker 3: So my first album is called reconceptualized because it's my starting point as to how I'm thinking, what I'm what Sophia Glani is going to be, and then hopefully my albums in the future will be an answer to that in a way.

10:29 Speaker 1: Okay, okay, very good. It's great that you have a plan and that you uh, you know, because a lot of people, you know, especially people who get started young, they you know, they're just kind of throwing everything against the wall and see what sticks. But you know, but you've clearly got a plan and you've got some good people around you too. You mentioned that the producer that you work with, Yes, his.

10:50 Speaker 2: Name is Doctor Kane's really really cool.

10:52 Speaker 3: Yeah, we've He's been there throughout this whole process, which is why this album is very very special to me. But I mean, like you said, I've got a plan just because I always I love making music.

11:03 Speaker 2: I'm always songwriting, I'm always recording.

11:05 Speaker 3: Even after this album will be released, I'm going to release more because I just love to do it, not because I want to keep releasing and hope that, you know, someday something really really sticks and I get really really big.

11:16 Speaker 2: You know what I mean.

11:16 Speaker 3: I just want to continue doing what I'm doing and this album is a second point first chapter.

11:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's that's outstanding. Well, very good. Well we look forward to I was singing about at the end of our conversation because you know, we played Vulnerability, I've seen it at the end, I might play wake Up again. I really like that track. And then absolutely absolutely, and then you know, we'll have you back in the future obviously because you know, as you're going to be releasing more singles and you know it gives us an excuse to have you back on.

11:44 Speaker 2: But yes, absolutely, thank you so much for your support. I've loved having this conversation.

11:50 Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, Sophia. Where's the best place to go online for people who want to keep up with everything that you're doing.

11:56 Speaker 3: I'd honestly say the three main which is Instagram at Sophia on the doc, Glani TikTok which is just Glani, and my Spotify which is also Sophia Glani.

12:05 Speaker 2: But honestly, you'll find me anywhere.

12:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, your name is very very googleable. As I like to.

12:11 Speaker 2: Say, thank you, you're not.

12:14 Speaker 1: You're not competing with a lot of other Sofia Gilani's which is a good thing. Hit exactly exactly. Well, very good, so we'll let you go and we're going to hit this track wake Up. But Sofia Gilani, thank you very much and we'll talk to you again soon, I'm sure.

12:29 Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Enjoy wake Up.

12:31 Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. You got to take care, bye bye. All right. That is Sophia Gilani and let's give this a spin. This is called wake Up. The album is reconceptualized and it will be out soon. Make sure you look for that and you'll be able to get it on vinyl, which is pretty cool. But here it is. This is wake Up by Sofia Gilani.