Earlier this week, SIOUX flexed his introspective side on his new EP, Whiskey House Bar Music. Over danceable lo-fi beats produced by Rocco., the Cincinnati MC expresses extreme relatability when it comes to all sides of love—the good, the bad, and the ugly. “Whiskey House Bar Music is an idea of a project fully consumed out in the middle of nowhere with little to no resources when it comes to quality,” SIOUX explains. In an interview with AudioFemme, he described what he was going for in terms of experimenting with “low-quality sound” and how he was feeling during the recording process. “Basically, I wanted to make a broken-love project,” says SIOUX. “That means I wanted almost a low-quality basement sounding project that seems like it was made really quick, due to a broken heart, and fresh off the feelings of that.” Lyrically, SIOUX dips into both the darkest sides of love and the euphoric highs that it can bring, all while easygoing instrumentals create a comforting backdrop. “I wanted to use very familiar-sounding beats but with a dark/metallic sound with my voice but with very true and echoing lyrics that love can bring,” he continued. “The good and bad—great and disastrous. You could say a ‘beautiful disaster’ in the lovelife of a sensitive person.” “Everybody that has loved can connect with these words,” he told AudioFemme. During the recording process, which spanned across two months, SIOUX used visualization to elicit—and buffer himself from—the vulnerability that the project demanded. “The reason I called it Whiskey House Bar Music is because for some reason I couldn’t stop visualizing that this is the type of music you might hear in a random bar out in the middle of nowhere,” he said. SIOUX

SIOUX / Photo by Chris Williams “The type of scene that [I pictured] is one guy in a strip bar sipping on Coke and rum, with a single stripper in the building dancing from a distance,” he continued, describing the contrasting feelings of intimacy and isolation that are found in the EP. “It’s almost like they’re connecting on a broken-down, personal level. That’s the scene that was in my head while recording this.” SIOUX, who belongs to the Ohio-based hip hop collective Casual Crooks, has been steadily releasing music this year, with his sophomore album, Grounded Star, arriving this past September. Stream SIOUX’s Whiskey House Bar Music EP below.

PLAYING CINCYSIOUX Finds His Groove On 'Whiskey House Bar Music' EP