Renata Kazhan – Slowburn Pop

Renata Kazhan is Ukrainian musician based in Helsinki, Finland. Today she releases her debut album, Slowburn Pop.

Slowburn Pop includes the single “Swift Sword.”

Slowburn Pop is the debut album of my solo project. The term was coined cause I never felt that existing genre names fully captured what I was doing. Slowburn Pop is also a state of mind. It is a space where time feels different — like falling endlessly, or floating somewhere in the middle of a dark sea. At first it can feel lonely or even unsettling, but when you stay there long enough, you start noticing all the details around you. The space becomes alive, and the journey begins.

When I make music, I usually start with creating a particular space. It is important to be able to place myself in it before anything else comes together. The space becomes the core of the composition and dictates the structure, mood, rhythm, colour and eventually the vocals and lyrics.

My sound is built through layering. I think about composition almost like making a huge collage, where every sound has its own place. Several synthesizers can merge into one entity, which I can then take apart and turn into a completely different texture. I like this process of constantly building, removing and reshaping things. I also tend to see music very visually.

The album is not meant to be an escape from reality. It became more of a place where I could experience things that were harder to experience in real life. In that sense, the album is also about the painful process of leaving childhood behind.

Slowburn Pop took three years to create.

The main transformation this album brought me was a little more confidence and a better understanding of myself. It gave me something solid to hold onto during these unstable and fragile times.

#renata_kazhan