What he says: “Hello, my name is Kevin and I record as Sad Eyed Beatniks, Present Electric, and Tam Lin. I also run the label Paisley Shirt Records that has put out releases from artists like Flowertown, Hits, Tony Jay, Cindy, April Magazine, Galore, Whitney’s Playland, Mister Baby, Nights Templar, Plastic Candles, R.E. Seraphin, Portabella and more. I’ve been making music under the name Sad Eyed Beatniks since 2014; when the original intent was to make simple 4-track cassette recordings with vocals, guitars, bass, and drum machine and post to Soundcloud with screenshots of various musicians. In late 2019, I stopped recording line-in and learned to play the drums; the releases after tend to have a bigger sound. Sad Eyed Beatniks performed as a live band for the first time in 2021, with Karina Gill (Cindy, Flowertown) on guitar, Mike Ramos (Tony Jay, Flowertown) on drums, and Kati Mashikian (April Magazine, Mister Baby) on bass. While the last Sad Eyed Beatniks album, Claudia’s Ethereal Weaver focused on the themes of change and rebirth, the new album, Ten Brocades, looks at a series of vignettes from the eyes of different characters. Mike Ramos plays drums/keys and Karina Gill plays guitar/keys on a number of tracks, while Karina painted the wonderful cover of a Peking Opera singer”.

Tendertwin is the project of Istanbul-born, London-based Bilge Nur Yilmaz. Bilge Nur Yilmaz’s distinctive voice subtly soaks up Turkey’s rich musical heritage from the lapping tides of the Black Sea and Mediterranean and filters it through drifting time spent in Philadelphia, Oxford, and London, — a familiar folk sound with an industrial glitch where landscapes are entangled in ambient sounds, wrong-footing melodies and unpredictable arrangements. 
Nurtured transatlantic, Tendertwin is a forager for half-lived stories. Inspired by the likes of Tim Buckley, Joan Armatrading, Meredith Monk, Mitski, and Debussy — Tendertwin creates celestial folk mixed with ambient noise and alt-rock tones. Her debut EP Ship Argo, out on July 5th, takes inspiration from a variety of disciplines involving the works of William Blake, Michel Foucault, Jean Cocteau, Euripides (Médea), Faith Wilding, and Ingmar Bergman. 
Ship Argo is a collection of songs that reveal Tendertwin’s introspective musings on themes such as water dementia, unrequited love, and the transient nature of existence and belonging. Each track is imbued with a sense of wanderlust and a longing for connection, mirroring Yilmaz’s own nomadic journey through life.