Orion Sun's Planetary Love Songs Will Transport You

Orion Sun contains multitudes. "I certainly exist in both optimism and nihilism," the Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter, place on Earth Tiffany Majette, told MTV News recently throughout a conversation about her bracing new album Hold Space for Me. Even the word "bracing" at first feels at odds with this silken number of moony R&B-pop. Although as she looks skyward for romantic metaphors — "You move me like a moonbeam," she sings on "Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me)" — Majette obtains a storm, unspooling her own history losing her residence and the death of a close friend.


"I understand a nihilist perspective, yet I'm able to understand it and then turn it into an optimistic perspective," she mentioned. "I do feel like I'm an optimistic person. I mean, sort of have be to determine to keep going and to have this order kind of tenacity that I don't know where it comes from."


it may come from the stars. As her moniker suggests, Majette has long taken inspiration from space pioneers like Mae Jemison and even wanted to be an astronaut as a kid. Her music as Orion Sun often evokes the planetary pull also noticed in love. "Swear you came down like a comet," she offers one minute, then moves on to burning desire a tune later: "Holy, warm like the sun be." She packs Hold Space for Me with simple images of the organic world — songs called "Lightning" and "Golden Hour" — alongside the immense weight of human consequence. She's looking up, although she's still bound by gravity.


Majette titles one wiggly groove "Grim Reaper" and finds an earthen delivery, quaking a message to someone gone before their time: "If I had it my way, I'd take your place." She's an explorer picking through smoldering wreckage, finding the bits that still gleam. Some days this is literal. Her "Coffee for Dinner" video, in which she gets a creative director credit, finds her playing a Twilight Zone-inspired lone wanderer in a space suit. In an era any time album launches feel more and more like cold intelligence delivery, Orion Sun is thinking cinematically.


"A lot of the music that I make is very visual. It stems from a place in my brain where I'm like, OK, what does this feeling look like sonically? What color is it?" She mentioned. "What do I hear once I'm looking at something, like an old picture, or [when I'm] YouTubing travel videos, those 4K videos, walking back through Japan or just places that I'd like to go? And I'm just looking at people, like, what are they listening to once they make something?"


Hold Space for Me is unmistakably insular, unwittingly brilliant for our current collective moment of self-isolation. "I'm not even going to lie: I'm not doing anything also different than before with this whole categorize kind of staying indoors thing," Majette mentioned. Her inside music longs to know more than what a window offers. The album finds Marjette aching for the comfort of another voice as well as a whiff of the nighttime air. That's why one of its most memorable moments comes if she suits up to spit a number of bars.


"I feel like A$AP Rocky, bitches on my jockey," she smirks, joyriding on "El Camino." After, she shouts out one of her inspirations in all yet name: "Money make you go from College Dropout to Yandhi." Marjette has invoked Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak as a key influence, plus The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. In this age of daily livestream performances, wishes she may visualize Billie Holiday on Instagram Live. "Maybe it's because I just read her book and I'm just very obsessed at the moment," she said.


Last month, before each person had to be indoors all of the time, Marjette was posting dreamy musical dispatches from her bedroom floor; she's since shared two more. She writes a lot on guitar, though she's self-taught on piano and ukulele as well. She makes beats. In the past, Majette has been so pumped to share a recently completed song that trim post them right away. Her previous project, A variety of Fleeting Moments and Daydreams, was exactly that. Hold Space for Me, although, was meant to feel more intentional.


"I sat with each [song] and really just marinated and wasn't so quick to be like, this is it, this is done," she mentioned. "Really just wanted to prepare ensure and visualize that each song felt complete to me. And I like that patience that I gained, because I really do think it's made a difference."


It's the patience to trace her own history on "Golden Hour" in a fast cadence — "I left residence, no cash coming in / Had to get a job, music wasn't getting spins" — and then pull away to let the gravity of her story linger over a subdued beat reminiscent of leaky pipes. She views the vulnerability inherent in poetry, her "first love in the arts world," as a key tool to use in songwriting. Still, she understands better than to share also much of herself in her music, even as she's spinning a story ripped directly from her own life.


"It's pretty fun to find ways to group kind of get my message across yet still feel protected and not also exposed," she mentioned. Yet I'm like that outdoors of my artist bag. I'm very cautious."


Carefully optimistic, then, feels right for Hold Space for Me, an album that fittingly concludes with Marjette sleeping late, frustrating the birds outdoor her window, nevertheless ultimately waking with clear eyes plus a vision of warmth. "I noticed my destiny," she intones, "and it's holding onto your heart."