Exclusive Track Premiere: ‘Half Awake,’ Porcelain Raft

ABOVE: PORCELAIN RAFT. PHOTO COURTESY OF MALIA JAMES.

After fronting various indie bands in London, Italian composer and musician Mauro Remiddi began his own solo project in 2010 under the name Porcelain Raft. That year he released an EP, Gone Blind, and shortly thereafter, his debut full-length, Strange Weekend (2012 via Secretly Canadian). Now he’s preparing to release his next EP, Half Awake, which will be available on cassettes and accompanied by limited edition block prints.

“I’ve always been drawing, but I’m not interested in painting as a medium,” Remiddi tells us. “In order to reproduce your design [with block printing], you have to take away what you don’t need. It’s liberating.”

While cassettes in 2015 might seem anachronistic, Half Awake is one of the first releases on the artist’s newly formed record label, Volcanic Field. “As a young label, [we] couldn’t afford to release vinyl yet,” Remiddi explains. “I never personally liked CDs, so I looked around here was a cassette deck recorder.”

Here we are pleased to premiere the titular track from the Brooklyn-based musician’s forthcoming EP. Infused with his signature, lofty vocals and a quiet bass line, “Half Awake” takes the listener to that exact state of mind.

“Just before we wake up, when we are half awake, our left brain is pushing the subconscious back in the basement. For a few seconds, we see without thinking,” Remiddi says. “In this song, my subconscious didn’t go back in the basement. It’s about coming to terms with yourself, [but] I realized how priceless it is to have someone special to share everything with. In this song, I’m sailing toward the loved one.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO PRE-ORDER HALF AWAKE, VISIT PORCELAIN RAFT’S WEBSITE.