Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, Niloo is the New Music Monday highlight!
Niloo is a Victoria-based musician who has been working hard to embrace her Persian roots, her family and friends as she put together the album she plans on releasing this summer.
Thus far, she has released the debut single from the forthcoming album, and chose to release it on Valentine’s Day, as it was a song about spending the somewhat besmirched occasion.
Niloo has been playing music in Victoria for a while, but only under her own name since just after the pandemic.
She used to play in a band called LOOELLE, a collaborative project which saw one EP released, but needed a new outlet for music when that project ended.
“We kind of disbanded in COVID and I was writing stuff on the side that didn’t really fit LOOELLE,” Niloo told Victoria Buzz.
“When we finally disbanded I was like, ‘okay, maybe now is not the best time,’ but it actually was the best time to write [my first] EP and hone in on the sound which is what I wanted to explore.”
With this project she wanted to craft a sound that was more dream-pop, folky and shoegaze.
She released a five-song EP in 2022 which was a collection of those songs that she first wrote during the pandemic.
Since then, Niloo has been further exploring sound and has been inspired by Middle-Eastern and Persian psych-rock.
These influences allowed her to get more in touch with herself and her ancestral roots.
“I really became obsessed with 60s and 70s Persian pop and rock music,” Niloo explained. “It’s something that I’m really intrigued by and enjoying.”
She says that it all started when she discovered some Turkish psych-rock, which led her to seek out Iranian music that was similar.
“I started writing stuff that was more leaning in that direction. I mean, the new record has a lot of that, also kind of mixed with my older shoegaze style.”
Another way Niloo has fleshed out her music is by putting together a full band. She enlisted Jeffery Ellom on bass, Keenan Mittag-Degala on synth and Jen Yakamovich on drums—all of whom are active in Victoria and Vancouver’s music scenes with other projects as well.
The first single off Niloo’s forthcoming record is called “Valentine’s in Kamakura.”
“This song, like having Valentine’s in Kamakura, Japan, actually happened,” said Niloo.
“I usually don’t really like Valentine’s Day. It’s weird, it’s an awkward thing for me—even if I am in a relationship, I’m kind of like, ‘this feels really put on and you know, weird. Even if I’m not in a relationship it’s weird.”
Niloo says this song was about when she spent Valentine’s Day with a partner in Japan and she remembers actually enjoying it.
Though she is no longer with that partner, Niloo explained that she wanted to try to focus on the good parts of the relationship, rather than seeing just the faults.
“We spent the day alone in that city, it’s like a temple city. It was really picturesque and beautiful and that relationship is now over,” she told Victoria Buzz.
“Two years ago I was kind of in my feels about that and was angry about how [the relationship] ended, but that memory of being in that beautiful place and being in love there was kind of the only one thing I could hold onto.”
She says that feeling salty about this relationship, mixed with feeling happy to have had that experience in Japan gave her the idea to put this song together.
“I was forcing myself, through writing this song, to remember the happiness of it,” she said.
Niloo said she managed to do this without taking the experience too seriously, and wrote the song in a way that looks back on this time in a tongue-in-cheek, humorous way.
“It’s kind of trying to be a bit ironic, like, ‘oh look at me, I’m so sad, I’m so angry and jaded,’ like poking fun at myself.”
Preview Niloo’s first single from her upcoming record, “Valentine’s in Kamakura” online below:
The song, as well as the rest of Niloo’s catalogue is also available on Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music.
Niloo says she doesn’t have any shows lined up at the moment but is looking at booking some shows soon for the summer and will definitely be playing a release show when she sets a date to put out the full album.
This album has been two years in the making so as far as goals go, Niloo is just really excited to get her newest music out into the world.
Follow Niloo on Instagram to keep up-to-date with when and where she is playing shows in Victoria and beyond.
Related:
- New Music Monday: fivefootnine’s debut EP focusses on friendship foundations
- New Music Monday: A Recorded Dawn blends slowcore with emo on debut EP
- New Music Monday: Taha releases debut dance-pop anthem ‘Something We Laugh About’
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“What can I say about CFUV, they’re amazing, without CFUV, the local music scene would be really hostile,” she laughed.
“Supporting local and regional art is so, so, so important. I also think it is one of the only public places and spaces to play really diverse music in Victoria. Sometimes I tune in and I hear things I would never [have thought to] look up on the internet.”
“If CFUV ever shut down, which like, ‘knock on wood’ will never happen, it would be so wack. There needs to be space for independent music to be broadcast—it’s really necessary,” she added.
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Niloo in the comments below.
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