New Release – Moonlight by Alnilam
In 2011 Elena Pinto taught herself to write songs. This may have seemed out of the blue, given her art background, but it came about pretty naturally.
Elena grew up in Costa Rica, surrounded by rainforests and oceans. As a child, she was an avid/obsessive reader, who wrote journals every year. She sang in plays, variety shows, choirs, and for anyone who would listen. She studied her brother’s vast record collection, memorized and practiced dozens of songs. She thought she would someday write her own lyrics.
Her path to songwriting would be a winding road through other art forms, and several cities. Elena studied visual arts for 7 years, at the Art Institute in Colorado and Parsons School of Design in New York, and took courses in poetry appreciation and creative writing at the New School for Social Research. After college.
In 2011, after going through several major changes and losses, including her Dad and her best friend passing away within weeks of moving to California, and inspired by David Bowie (who started out as an artist) she decided it was time to sit down and write some songs.
Het debut album ‘Indigo Sky’ featured ten songs Elena wrote on top of Turkish composer Serhat Arslan‘s guitar pieces.
Het new song ‘Moonlight’ will be out 27th May.
“It tells the story of a starry night, a barefoot walk down a gravel road down to the coast, a full moon party, a wish. “I found you and you found me, a makeshift disco by the sea.”Dreamy nostalgia. The freedom of youth. The feeling of melting into the universe.”
“It was inspired by one of Serhat Arslan’s guitar pieces and memories of trips to Costa Rican beaches. Bits and pieces of my life. It is so dark out there at night, on the beach, that the stars truly stand out in all their glory. When I was little I would always look for the Orion constellation. I didn’t even know its name, I just really liked the shape of it.”
“The song will be accompanied by a music video will be on YouTube. The animated video was made by Chimera, an artist from Sri Lanka. I contacted him online at a website named Fiverr.”
“I made the cover art. It is somewhat unusual because it’s a photo of a hand-painted collagraph plate, instead of a print. A collagraph is a low-relief print of a thick collage, or plate. I made this one in my printmaking class in NY. I took a particle wood board and stuck things on it, like rope, and bits of corduroy fabric, with gesso. The sun was a flattened out, tin, take-out container. I made several prints of it back then, mostly black and white. For the cover I took the actual plate and hand-painted it with oils and gold dust.”
A pre-save is available here.
