Best known as the lead singer of Tribali, Eliza Borg Rizzo is recognised for her haunting almost mystical chanting. Vibrantly unique in her stage presence, she has a reputation for putting her audiences under a spell and thanks to a new project she has recently undertaken with Jeremy Tabone, she is set to put a new audience in a trance, albeit a very different kind. I spoke with Eliza and Jeremy about the new, exciting project they are collaborating on and how they would like it to develop.

“Tribali has given me the opportunity to sing alternative music with very complicated chords and I have always loved being part of it, however, that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy working on other things too. When Jeremy reached out to me to work with him, I was immediately interested and when we met up and started jamming together a couple of tunes came very organically. It was super fun, we’ve really enjoyed the process,” says Eliza.

With Tribali releasing their much-awaited fourth album on July 4 and the first song of Jeremy and Eliza’s collaboration released in mid-June, doesn’t she find it all a bit overwhelming? “It obviously wasn’t planned to coincide, however, everything’s gone well so far. The first song of the Neon Culture project is called I Don’t Know You. It is very different from the stuff I usually sing because it has an electronic pop sound,” says Eliza.

The brainchild of Jeremy who spent many years as a deejay, Neon Culture is designed to be a project which allows for a host of different collaborations. So far, I Don’t Know You was released on June 14 and another two songs are in the pipeline.

“A year ago, I started to work on Neon Culture seriously and that’s when I reached out to Eliza,” says Jeremy. “We came up with I Don’t Know You and it’s basically a light-hearted tune about meeting someone in a club. The song was first played on Xfm, then the video was released on social media. We even have a website set in place. We are releasing the song through Spinup which is basically a site where unsigned artists can distribute their music and be discovered. We wanted to create an electronic vocal pop song which would be radio friendly, catchy and perfect for the summer. I think we’ve managed to create something pretty special.”

Speaking about what motivated him to undergo Neon Culture, Jeremy is emphatic and passionate in his reply. “I’ve been thinking about doing this for so long. I had some material left over from when I used to deejay regularly and I thought I would work on it. The Neon Culture project is nothing if not a work in progress and in fact, the goal is to release a new song every two to three months. This cause is so close to my heart because I love music so much and I feel that local artists deserve the chance to showcase their talents.”

Having been on the music scene for a long time, Jeremy has a lot of feedback about the  Maltese music climate. “It’s hard for local artists to make it big. This is a personal project and while it was very fun, it wasn’t easy… even choosing the right name for it proved to be a challenge.

“That said, we were very lucky with the way that everything came together, so many talented people worked on the music video, for example. I really feel that the local scene needed more electronic style music and I feel we’ve made something special. I suppose I also wanted to encourage people on the local scene to reach their dreams.

“It’s really good that the first song is set in a club and is ultimately about bringing people together because that is what I would like to see for our music scene too. Malta deserves to have a platform where its talent can be showcased and hopefully, radios will play more local music. There’s nothing more important than support. I truly believe that with enough support you can take over the world,” Jeremy concluded.

www.neonculture.eu

Facebook: www.facebook.com/NeonCultureMusic

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