Harris explains the background of new single ‘How To Disappear’: “I wrote this song while going on very long walks every day during a dark period in my life, maybe even for 2 or 3 hours sometimes. I live about a 10-minute walk from Lake Michigan and I would go there and watch the waves and record them every day. The sound of the water always felt really soothing, especially when you want to disappear from the world and join the clouds and the trees in their unknowing state. It’s that feeling when you don’t want to live anymore, but you also don’t want to die, it’s just the in-between where you wish you could just disappear and join the vapor breezes. Life can be very unkind sometimes, and it’s hard to know what to do when you’re feeling really down.

“My favorite thing when life is unkind is to write music about it and tell a story with sound. I love to create sound and use found sound, too. I tried to capture the little sounds of the world while walking around. Sounds like leaves crunching underfoot to make the rhythm, the sound of lake water breathing in and out and then run through a phaser, little sounds that no one really notices that make natural rhythms in nature. Then, I would go home and pitch and stretch and retime these sounds to the beat. I used a variety of synths and a really dark bass to create the disorienting feeling of being sad and neutral and dark about whether or not I want to stay on this planet. I added some cringey y2k chants for irony. I hope you enjoy it.”

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Harris explains how new single ‘Deep Empty’ came to be: “Some people have described intensely emotional or painful experiences as similar to psychedelic experiences. This song is about deep and dark feelings that always seem to try and take over my mind. I take them to task and try to eradicate them for good. This experience can take me to a psychedelic place in my brain where little ghosts and memories dance around.

“I wrote this song as a little note on my phone in the middle of the night. Writing songs is sometimes the only thing that can help me get through my days, so I guess that’s why I keep making music. It’s just a thing that helps me survive on this planet. I have no idea what the songs are going to turn into when I start them. I love experimenting with sampling my vocals and turning them into synths and instruments. I like to create layers with delays and reverbs. I love to experiment with creating all kinds of sounds using samples that I manipulate and affect a million times until I don’t even know how I made them. There are tons of sounds on this record that I made by experimenting with granular and wavetable synths for hours and hours and hours. I usually pitch, stretch, and re-time synths, guitars, drum samples, or my voice to make intricate patterns and polyrhythms. I know this music may never be commercially accepted, it is very esoteric and dark. This music may not be for everyone. but I hope that the people who need it will find it. I think it can be healing music for those people who find themselves in a dark place.”

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Born Days is the conceptual darkwave synth-pop project from Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist singer, songwriter, and producer Melissa Harris. Her first full-length album My Little Dark is set to release on October 6, 2023, through AudioSport Records.

Harris explains the meaning of ‘My Little Dark’: “This song is about an extremely personal and complex relationship that is so interwoven and binding that there is no beginning and end. Have you ever been caught in a dark and lonely place that you have built inside your heart? Through creating this song, I discovered that I have a say in how my destiny will play out despite everything that happened in the past. Born Days, as a project, is really about waking up to just being my real, true self despite how raw and embarrassing it can be to admit all these really personal things in my music.”

Candidly vulnerable and emotionally complex, My Little Dark is a concept album that draws inspiration from the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath and the childlike innocence of Dr. Seuss to narrate a mystical, sci-fi, coming-of-age, adventure of a young woman trying to survive the psychological limitations she has placed on her own reality. Mystical and melancholic, Harris’s ethereal voice escapes into dark symphonic soundscapes driven by dreamy, synth-heavy polyrhythms that paint a cinematic electronic pop soundtrack soaked in moody, hazy textures.

Drawing influences from alternative, darkwave, dreampop, and goth culture, Harris plays with a sonic palette of soft, dark, and dusty tones that mix elements of grunge, post-punk, neo-psychedelia, shoegaze, and modern pop. Deeply nostalgic and profoundly personal, My Little Dark explores Harris’s struggles with mental illness, trauma, and destructive cycling. Her distinctively soft and sweet voice is saturated with otherworldly essence that explodes into apocalyptic crescendos and escapes into ghostly innocence. Harris’s songs are brilliantly enchanting and sonically dripping with haunted textures, little spirits from the ether, and dystopian landscapes that leave you longing for a more innocent and beautiful time.

My Little Dark:

1. Enemy
2. My Little Dark
3. Bird Song
4. Over Again
5. Dreams
6. How To Disappear
7. Ganymede
8. Deep Empty (DMT Feelings)
9. Destroyer
10. Conscious Conscience

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