Belau

About

" Bright-eyed electro pop sailing through flowing harmonies and billowing vocals "

Chillout has become ubiquitous, and has been elevated to something like a state of being: a philosophy, a genre unto itself. The Hungarian downtempo-chillwave band, Belau, embraced the genre that is fed from the urge for relaxation and inner balance, and quickly made a splash in the scene. ‘Island Of Promise’ was the band’s first song, featuring the vocals of Hegyi Dóra and was the soundtrack of HBO’s ‘Golden Life’ series and was also featured in Telenor and Pepsi advertisements. After a long period of touring, Belau released their debut album ‘The Odyssey’, in 2017, a record that won the Hungarian Grammy in the category of best electronic music album.

Three years later, the electronic duo of Péter Kedves and Krisztián Buzás returned with the Caribbean-inspired album ‘Colourwave’, with which they step further in the direction of chill-pop, while flowing with energy. Instead of being what the music is based around, the synthesized aspects, once so prominent, now act more like the thread that sews the different squares of this downtempo quilt together and keeps everything in place.

Especially with the array of female-centric vocal harmonies from Sophie Barker (‘Essence’), Sophie Lindinger (‘Breath’) and Saya Noé (‘Finally Home’), among others, the album gets even warmer in pop hooks, lush instrumentation and unobtrusive electronica that come together into wonderfully descriptive trip-hop/ dream pop songs. In ‘Luz’, released in 2021, the band takes an Afro-Cuban turn, via an immense and almost awe-inspiring vocal landscape, that puts Belau apparently on the way to something even more unique.

Published: November 29, 2019 – Updated: November 26, 2021