San Zhi - Soma

Remember your first boyfriend or girlfriend? It probably felt like true love for a few days before you moved on and realised that you were just two ships passing in the night. Well the internet is creating that same temporary status with much of the music we now consume. From constant next big thing hype and then disappointment to d-i-y laptop producers banging out a track from their bedroom and uploading it for five minutes of blog buzz adoration before someone else does exactly the same round the corner and ears are dragged off elsewhere.

Yet it’s not only listeners who get easily distracted by something sexier / prettier on the other side of the room. One of the peculiarities of the internet is that it’s altered the way in which music is available to us. In the past a band could only release something physically and once somebody had purchased it they owned it forever – as an artist you couldn’t take it back or throw it in the bin once it was out there. Yet now some music (like that boyfriend or girlfriend) is only temporary, uploaded or withdrawn in a single click; what was there before can be hidden from wanting ears.

San Zhi sneaked onto Breaking More Waves last month almost unnoticed in our Saturday Surf feature with a song called Towards The Sun, but then they then proceeded to remove it from their Soundcloud just a short while later. It no doubt had something to do with the sort of words that industry types use like ‘strategy’ and ‘campaign’ yet one question that we’d like to ask is how can fans gain a long term attachment to a band when they’re giving and then taking away again? Play hard to get too often and you’ll end up being dumped.

Anyway, thankfully San Zhi have put up a new track to keep us entertained  – rather like kicking one girl or boy out of bed and letting another one in. This one’s called Soma – it’s all cute and curious with a pretty boy-girl chorus that even with its fairly lo-fi production can’t disguise the fact that there’s a dreamy pop sensibility just desperate to get out. Maybe one day it will be taken down from the internet and replaced with a big glossy big studio version of the song, but for now enjoy this version, no matter how temporary it may be.

San Zhi - Soma