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Release Link: https://xelon.ffm.to/cairo-streets

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/jackquigleyupstream/

Website: https://upstreamtrilogy.com/

Some songs are designed to make you dance, while others leave a lasting emotional impression. On her latest single, “Can’t Deny,” Janalynn Castelino successfully delivers both. The multilingual singer-songwriter, producer and doctor blends infectious dance-pop production with heartfelt lyricism, creating a track that feels equally suited to the dancefloor and a late-night playlist.

Released on 26 June, “Can’t Deny” showcases Castelino’s ability to effortlessly weave English and Spanish lyrics into a polished pop production. Driven by pulsating beats, bright synths and an irresistible rhythm, the song captures the rush of falling deeply for someone while celebrating the excitement that comes with embracing those emotions.

At the centre of the record is Castelino’s expressive vocal performance. Rather than relying solely on production, she brings warmth and authenticity to every lyric, allowing the emotional narrative to unfold naturally. The bilingual approach feels genuine rather than gimmicky, reflecting her international background and artistic identity.

Following her previous crossover release, “Que Me Ha Pasado,” “Can’t Deny” continues to explore multicultural influences while leaning further into contemporary dance-pop. The memorable chorus, featuring the lines “What’s happened to me? Or, was it always meant to be?”, builds into the infectious hook, “A feeling I can’t deny,” creating the kind of refrain that lingers long after the song ends.

Born from a musical upbringing that spans Sicilian folk melodies, soul, contemporary pop and Baroque-style church music, Castelino has steadily developed a sound that crosses genres without losing its identity. Based in Los Angeles and of Italian heritage, she continues to build a catalogue that balances commercial appeal with personal storytelling. “Can’t Deny” represents another confident step in that evolution, revealing a brighter, more upbeat side of her artistry while maintaining the emotional sincerity that has become one of her trademarks.

Whether you’re discovering Janalynn Castelino for the first time or following her growing catalogue, “Can’t Deny” is a vibrant reminder that pop music can be both irresistibly catchy and emotionally authentic. It’s a confident, feel-good release that leaves listeners eager to hear what’s next from this emerging global artist.

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How a Professional Event Company Elevates Your Next Celebration

There is a meaningful difference between an event that happens and an event that is remembered. The difference is rarely about budget alone. It has more to do with the intentionality brought to every decision, from the venue selection and the flow of the guest experience to the lighting that shifts the room’s mood across the evening. Whether the occasion is a milestone birthday, a corporate celebration, a product launch, or a large-scale wedding, a professional event company brings the experience and the vendor relationships to close the gap between what you imagine and what guests actually experience.

What a Professional Event Company Actually Brings

The value of working with a professional event management company is easier to understand once you break down what the expertise actually consists of.

Creative direction and concept development. Most people know what they want an event to feel like, but translating that feeling into a physical environment requires skills that combine interior design, spatial planning, brand understanding, and an awareness of what is technically achievable in different venues. A professional event company starts with a brief, asks the right questions, and develops a creative concept that gives everyone involved a shared reference point before any spending begins.

Vendor relationships and negotiation. The events industry runs on relationships, and experienced event companies have spent years building networks of reliable suppliers across catering, floristry, audiovisual production, entertainment, photography, and hire. These relationships produce better pricing, priority availability, and the kind of accountability that is harder to enforce when dealing with unfamiliar suppliers for the first time.

Logistics management. An event is a logistical operation with dozens of interdependent moving parts. The catering team needs to know when the speeches will start. The audiovisual crew needs to be briefed on the program sequence. The venue’s load-in restrictions need to be coordinated with the supplier delivery schedules. A professional event company manages these interdependencies so that the host can focus on their guests rather than their phone.

On-the-day coordination. Even a perfectly planned event encounters unexpected situations. A supplier who is running late, a weather change that requires a contingency to be activated, a technical issue with the audiovisual setup. Having an experienced event manager present and managing the operation means these situations are resolved before guests are aware they existed.

When a Professional Company Makes the Most Difference

While any event benefits from professional expertise, there are situations where the gap between DIY and professional management is most significant.

Large guest lists. Events with more than 80 to 100 guests typically cross a threshold where the complexity of managing simultaneous logistics, multiple supplier relationships, and a varied guest experience becomes genuinely difficult to handle without a dedicated team.

Events with complex technical requirements. Any event that involves a significant audiovisual production, a live entertainment component, or a venue transformation beyond standard decorating requires specialist project management. The interaction between lighting design, sound engineering, and the physical space is technical enough that errors made during setup are difficult or impossible to correct once guests arrive.

High-stakes occasions. A fortieth birthday, an anniversary celebration, a company milestone. These are events that carry emotional weight for the host and guests alike, and the cost of a substandard experience is not measured in money but in memory. Investing in professional execution for events that genuinely matter is a different calculation from the everyday spend decisions that can be made on price alone.

Cross-cultural or international events. Corporate events that involve guests from multiple countries and cultures, or social events that need to navigate different cultural expectations around food, dress, entertainment, and ceremony, benefit from an event company with relevant experience.

The team at Event Management company at Blink Experience works across corporate and social events in Dubai and the broader Middle East region, with a portfolio that spans large-scale conferences, product launches, and high-end private celebrations. A representative noted: “Clients who have tried to manage a complex event themselves almost always say the same thing afterward. They spent the entire event managing logistics instead of experiencing it. Our job is to give that experience back to them.”

Practical Steps to Getting the Most From Your Event Company

Engage early. The earlier a professional event company is involved, the more value they can add. Venue availability at popular locations closes out months in advance, and the best suppliers book quickly. Starting the brief six months out from a significant event is not too early.

Be honest about the budget. A good event company will work within a realistic budget and tell you clearly what is achievable and what is not. Vague or inflated budget conversations waste everyone’s time and produce disappointment when proposals land.

Provide as much context as possible. The event company’s creative output is only as good as the brief they receive. The more clearly the host articulates the feeling they want to create, the guest experience they want to deliver, and the logistical constraints they are working within, the better the concept that emerges.

According to a Wikipedia overview of event management as a professional discipline, the field has grown significantly in professional recognition over the past two decades, with dedicated certification pathways, professional associations, and an expanding body of practice knowledge that distinguishes experienced practitioners from generalist coordinators.

Trust the expertise. Once a brief is agreed and a concept is approved, the event company needs room to execute. Micromanaging the details of the execution undermines the professional’s ability to manage the interdependencies effectively.

A Reuters report on the global events industry noted that post-pandemic recovery in the events sector has been accompanied by significant quality upgrading, with clients investing more in professionally managed experiences as the industry returns to full capacity.

Working with a professional event company is not a luxury reserved for unlimited budgets. It is a practical decision that produces better outcomes, reduces stress for the host, and delivers an experience that guests remember.

Photo: Molly Burmeister

Melbourne alt-pop-rock artist SASHA SUMMERS today releases the music video for her sophomore single, Belladonna (This Is How You Die). Written, directed, styled and edited entirely by SUMMERS herself, the video is an extension of her core artistic philosophy: that the phrase “Written and Directed by Sasha Summers” belongs on everything she creates.

“As a film school student I find it really important that my work has my little fingerprints all over it. The phrase ‘Written and Directed by Sasha Summers’ is very important to me.”

Shot across three distinctly charged locations – a friend’s astrology and tarot space, her first ballet school, and a gothic church in Melbourne – the video leans fully into Belladonna’s dark feminine aesthetic. Occult, goth-coquette and moody, the visual world Summers has built is one she had mapped out before the first note was even recorded.

The clip’s conceptual anchor is drawn from a recurring nightmare Summers has experienced, of trying desperately to move, to get up, and being completely unable to. No matter how hard she tries, her legs won’t respond. It’s a visceral, disorienting image of powerlessness and the video transforms it into something defiant.

“The Craft walked so I could run. I have this recurring nightmare where I either can’t breathe or walk. No matter how much I try to move my legs, even dragging one leg with my hands one at a time, I can’t really move. It’s about getting back up anyway, even though you can’t walk. To take your power back one way or another. Even when everything is against you.”

A current film school student, Summers has cited David Lynch and Sofia Coppola as key visual touchstones, directors who made their own rules and left meaning open to interpretation. That same instinct drives Belladonna’s visual world. Nothing here is accidental, from the locations to the styling to the edit. Every choice belongs to her.

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Photo by Will Zhang

1300, the singular Korean-Australian unit, have dropped their esteemed debut album, ILLSAMGONGGONG via Universal Music Korea. LISTEN HERE.

More hopeful and optimistic than their dark George mixtape and a little more mature than the youthful optimism of Foreign Language, today’s ILLSAMGONGGONG – the Korean spelling of one three hundred – conceptually follows 1300’s path back to each other, rediscovering their drive after moments of dysphoria.

The clearest distillation of the group’s expression and purpose, ILLSAMGONGGONG is a representation of the emotional core at the heart of 1300 and the strength of their impact together as one. Sparked from a desire to create and yearning for like-minded individuals to make that world with, that impetus for the project thrives today with clarity and humility.

ILLSAMGONGGONG paints DALI, goyo, rako, Nerdie and pokari’s journey through brotherhood, from team to family. Steadily rebuilding their connection to each other with the renegade beats (‘Headrock’), energy (‘Home’) and surprises synonymous with the group, this debut record is 1300’s most direct boyband pivot yet and emotionally heightened throughout the thirteen tracks by their own journey of self discovery.

Equally able to soundtrack the next Maple Story, with 1300’s most overt influences coming alive on ILLSAMGONGGONG. The grandeur of K-pop sits next to classic RNB and hip hop nods – a collision of genre agnostic impulses that shows the 1300 charm in full. At one step, you’ll surrender headfirst to a drum-and-bass rave, and the next step – a Goth rock band closer – will make you double-take.

Crisp and carefully crafted with playful production at its core, ILLSAMGONGGONG puts 1300 fiercely in step with one-of-a-kind collectives as Odd Future and Brockhampton. A group that can comfortably do anything, with a firm eye on world dominion that never wavers. At the end of the day, ‘MUSIC’ best highlights why they do it. For 1300, theirs is a simple motto: “Stop being sad and shit, life’s too short not to dance.”

ILLSAMGONGGONG LP is out now, buy/stream it here.

TRACKLIST
ILLSAMGONGGONG
Headrock (feat. GIRIBOY)
Fever
wheres my money (feat. Kim Ximya)
Whistle
100 (feat. DKAY, CHANGMO)
Work
BRAVE
clear out the room
Home
party all night
MUSIC
sick

Stay connected with 1300:
23 Profile | Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Soundcloud

Photo by David Milan Kelly

Swapmeet’s anticipated debut album has landed after a whirlwind year for the Adelaide four-piece. Mount Zero is out now via Winspear following it’s placement as Feature Album on triple j this week. This weekend, the group are touring the East Coast for a series of intimate in-store performances and signings. Tickets are on sale now for their headline world tour. LISTEN / PURCHASE MOUNT ZERO HERE + BUY TIX HERE.

Mingling airy sweetness with jagged surrealism, Mount Zero transmutes so many of the regrets and uncertainties of young adulthood into a burgeoning, newfound confidence. Named after the road sign passed across many interstate drives, it would become a beacon to another portal for Swapmeet. A place they’d never visit, but indicates a shifting landscape. “It became a symbol for people we’d see but never meet. When you’re always in a different city and trying new things, there are a lot of experiences you observe but never get to fully explore,” says Maxwell Elphick.

Circling common themes:  first loves, first heartbreaks, first embarrassments, first disasters – the ways that the early years of adulthood can shatter your expectations about how life is supposed to go. Mount Zero bottles the tooth-gritting intensity of feeling yourself change at the cellular level under reality’s unyielding pressures, it’s a tribute to all the lives that can never be lived, all the paths that will never be followed – and an ode to the one that lies just ahead, too.

‘I Know!’ lets precise fingerpicking buckle beneath hammer swings of bass on the giddy ‘2 C U’. ‘Halfway’ drapes its cinematic imagery and pointed witticisms in overlapping, mixed-fidelity guitar figures, while the delectably catchy ‘Bonny’ molts its suntanned skin to crescendo in a noise burst. Mount Zero caps off an unprecedented period of elevation for Swapmeet.

Since setting the year ablaze with their Winspear label signing, Swapmeet played 13 showcases in Austin and were anointed “the winner of SXSW”; their triple j-playlisted single ‘I Know!’ landed AMRAP charting on debut at #2 nationally and #1 on Rock/Metal following over a hundred rabid spins in its first week – a reaction that never let up with each new single and labelled globally as Rolling Stone’s Artist You Need To Know, Unearthed’s Feature Artist, NME’s Radar Artist, Stereogum‘s Band to Watch and Apple Music‘s Up Next artist.

Swapmeet have accumulated a staggering list of DSP editorial playlisting and cover placement worldwide, quietly matching the organic reach of their breakout ‘Ceiling Fan’ on the heels of a million streams. Theirs was also the most coveted Phoenix Central Park ballot entry to date. This all culminates in a debut world tour later this year, including Pitchfork Festival Paris and London, and dates supporting Wolf Alice at Sydney Opera House Forecourt and Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

Mount Zero firmly establishes the moment the Adelaide four-piece come into their own. Look through a keyhole, and you might see something on the other side of the door you can’t quite reach yet. Just as the beacon an uncanny plaque would come to represent, Swapmeet’s journey through Mount Zero attests the transformative power of that potential. See all in-store signings and tour routing info BELOW.

Mount Zero LP is out now, buy/stream it here.

TRACKLIST
I Know!
Mount Zero
Bonny
Halfway
2 C U
Seeds
Sand
Personal (Don’t Take It)
My Heart Breaks II

SWAPMEET IN-STORES
Fri 17 Jul – SoundMerch – Naarm / Melbourne
Sat 18 Jul – Music Farmers – Dharawal Land / Wollongong
Sun 19 Jul – HUM On King – Eora / Sydney
Mon 20 Jul – Abicus – Mulubinba / Newcastle
Tue 21 Jul – IMA x Glitter Records x Somersault Magazine – Meanjin / Brisbane

WORLD TOUR DATES
Fri 4 Sep – Rhino Room – tarntanya / Adelaide
Sat 5 Sep – The Lansdowne – Eora / Sydney
Fri 11 Sep – Black Bear Lodge – Meanjin / Brisbane
Fri 18 Sep – Northcote Social Club – Naarm / Melbourne
Thu 8 Oct – El Cid – Los Angeles, CA
Fri 9 Oct – Neck Of The Woods – San Francisco, CA
Sun 11 Oct – Baby Yaga – Seattle, WA
Mon 12 Oct – Polaris – Portland, OR
Wed 14 Oct – Schubas – Chicago, IL
Fri 16 Oct – Monarch Tavern – Toronto, CA
Sat 17 Oct – Toscadura – Montreal, CA
Thu 22 Oct – Baby’s All Right – New York City, NY
Fri 23 Oct – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
Sat 24 Oct – Songbyrd Music House – Washington, DC
Fri 30 Oct – London Calling – Amsterdam, Netherlands
Sat 31 Oct – Les Nuits Botanique Weekender – Brussels, Belgium
Sun 01 Nov – Merleyn – Nijmegen, Netherlands
Mon 02 Nov – Badehaus Szimpla – Berlin, Germany
Tue 03 Nov – Yard Club – Cologne, Germany
Thu 05 Nov – Pitchfork Music Festival – Paris, France
Fri 06 Nov – The Hope & Ruin – Brighton, England
Sat 07 Nov – Pitchfork Music Festival – London, England
Wed 11 Nov – The Abbey – Manchester, England
Thu 12 Nov – Nice ‘n’ Sleazy – Glasgow, Scotland
Sat 14 Nov – The Grand Social – Dublin, Ireland

Tickets available at swapmeetband.com

Stay connected with Swapmeet:
23 Profile | Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Bandcamp | triple j Unearthed