This month’s pick for best new artist is ImAwake.
After more than 2 years in the making, ImAwake has finally released her album Disorganized Rainbow, this August 6th. Each song is named after a colour and has associated feelings. Her deep, relatable lyrics are soothing and help encourage people to realize their emotions.
ImAwake sees vulnerability as an art and a strength. Through her music, a genre that she describes as a mix of pop, indie and R&B, she expresses emotions. Her album Disorganized Rainbow is all about understanding emotions while showing their complexity.
“Our emotions are oh so very real. And those emotions, usually they ignite this colour… This colour wheel that I see when I think about music, or I think about a feeling. I wanted to put those together, and I also wanted to say that the feelings [are a] spectrum. [The spectrum] doesn’t always come in order. It can be really mixed up, confusing at times, and exciting at times as well,” ImAwake said. “To me, [Disorganized Rainbow] was about creating this hope and bringing out vulnerability as something that is actually a strength. To go through all those emotions and correlating them to colours helped me better understand the feeling, better understand the song, and what it meant to me and to other people. I think there is a relatability in that.”
ImAwake is not only a singer, she also works as a social worker technicien, a job that strengthens her music career. Through the language of music, she intends to maximize people’s well-being and advocate for them, and their mental health. Her Disorganized Rainbow album reminds people that “emotions are important, and we do need to feel. Suppressing emotions will only cycle into something more negative in the long run” ImAwake said. “Can we get out of our comfort zone, and can we face some of the most truthful parts of our feelings? I think that is a whole other level in self-care.”
Though ImAwake has alwaysbeen a singer and creative person, she has only intentionally been putting music out there over the last four years.
“I can think back to when I was just a young teenager, and a bit before that. I think I was always being creative in my own ways. Always singing, always into listening to a bunch of types of music” ImAwake said. “I didn’t know what that meant for a long time, and nor did I think that I could actually do something with this.”
Along with working on her album’s music videos, ImAwake is hoping to perform soon. She’s from Montreal and has performed for all kinds of audiences, from bars in downtown Montreal to a camp for disadvantaged children. She’ll take any chance to perform, “If there is a word for more than happy, that’s how I feel performing.” ImAwake said. She is thankful for all the people with whom she works. “We have such a great team to put this all together. You’ll see the great talents of JLK and Nicolas’s EverydayThing Productions.” Her project executive producer and project manager, JLK and video producer Nicolas Kara, founder of EDT Productions, have been busy planning visuals alongside ImAwake for her album. Indigo will be the first music video that’s coming out, which has characters and a storyline to follow. Ayo Saro, ImAwake’s executive producer, crafts her music’s beats. She shares her song’s idea with him, and he creates a beat that portrays her idea, feeling and lyrics.“ What really inspires me is the beat. It hits, and the words are flowing out of my mouth,” ImAwake said, as a writer on all her songs. “The beat pulls out things that I didn’t even know I was thinking about.”
ImAwake is very grateful for all the people who are part of her team in producing her music, visuals, beats, and those who make music collaborations with her. “It’s a mix of different artists, different touches, and I think that is what makes it so diverse, so versatile,”ImAwake said. “There is a lot of heart in this album, and what is better than to listen to a whole lot of talent in one project.”
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