East London’s Rain Maze goes beyond typical bedroom pop with "Sleeptalking"

Having developed something of a name across the blogosphere, London-based soloist Rain Maze is increasingly proving he has more to offer than what at first catches the eye.

Despite initially appearing tied to the tag of bedroom pop, it quickly becomes clear that such a definition belies the scope to his sound. Whilst admittedly expressing a wonderfully sincere lo-fi aesthetic, Rain Maze writes and performs music that goes beyond the solitary introspection of many bedroom musicians, and engages with the psychedelic expanse acts such as Tame Impala currently inhabit.

Such a notion has never been more fully reflected than on the lead single from the new EP, "Sleeptalking". Bigger and brighter than anything Rain Maze has done previously, its glistening, repetitive guitar lines and nostalgic vocal performance imbue it with an airy sentimentality that will have no issue connecting with a wider audience.

Rain Maze doesn’t completely shirk the sense of isolation often associated with bedroom pop however. Recorded over the period of a week in a rural Scottish village, the EP from which the title track is taken has as a whole been described as "an introspective collage". This sense of detached introspection is further expressed when Rain Maze himself explains how "the beauty of the universe is that nothing is certain or fixed, and we just drift through it attached to nothing but emotions and memories".

Sleeptalking is out now on HoneyPeace Records.