Playlist Heaven Chats: Rachel Davie Lee
The music industry always throws up it’s interesting characters and narratives and yet, impressively still, there are still surprises left to be had. Rachel Davie Lee may don the lawyer title by day but she finds herself behind the microphone belting out her own palette of R&B by nightfall. It’s a grand concoction that has been realised in her debut EP ‘Barely Concealed’ – we had the joy of finding out more..
PH: What, to you, makes a good playlist?
I love a playlist where the songs or tunes really flow into the other. It could reflect one main genre but still have a really good mix of styles and sounds where the curator has carefully chosen how the tunes flow into and compliment each other. I think that makes a really engaging playlist.
PH: What is your favourite playlist at the moment?
I am really into the UK based Electric Soul Show available on Mixcloud. DJ Mistri makes the playlist available after each show. His playlist is always really fluid and is diverse yet somehow he manages to balance house tunes really well with a soul or jazz track in the same show.
PH: If you were deserted on an island what would be a playlist of 5 songs you couldn’t live without?
Almost impossible to answer but:
My Baby Just Cares For Me – Nina Simone
Night Nurse – Gregory Isaacs
Stereo Love – Edward Maya, Vika Jigulina
Man In The Mirror – Michael Jackson
Songbird – Eva Cassidy
PH: On the other side of it, what would be a playlist of 5 songs you find impossible to listen to?
Broadly speaking anything in the indie-pop melancholy genre, hard explicit rap/hip-hop or heavy metal!
PH: How relevant do you think playlists are in the modern age of consuming music?
I think they reflect our age of customer choice and ultimately being in control of what we listen to and how we discover music. Playlists and internet radio are of course a sign of our times and they do help to promote new as well as established artists and it’s positive that there are platforms which play underrated or undiscovered music that isn’t currently mainstream.
PH: What has been the general reaction to your new EP so far?
Generally appreciative which I’m happy about of course. I first started off doing my own campaigns and submitting songs to radio stations, playlists and blogs. I got a lot of rejections but also several approvals, which for my first EP made me realise it surely had some potential! Since then (with Quite Great’s help!) it’s received a decent amount of radio play and I was made ‘Artist of the Month’ by one station in November which was a really unexpected surprise! “Love Is In The Air” and ‘Seasons” were recently picked up by a variety of Spotify playlists for different audiences so that’s nice to know that the songs can fit into different categories or themes beyond just ‘RnB’, and versatility was the intention behind the EP.
PH: Do you have plans to take your new material out onto the live stage?
This month as it happens, as I plan to do some acoustic performances as part of my annual Christmas set at the BVI Sushi Bar! That will be a good creative experiment as to how they can transfer from the studio to a live environment.
PH: Were there any huge obstacles to tackle in recording the new EP?
Covid if anything was an obstacle, because I travelled to Atlanta to record them back in February this year before the vaccine was even widely or locally available and all the new travel protocols and tests were a source of anxiety.
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