April 16, 2021—SYML, the solo project of singer, songwriter and producer Brian Fennell, shares his highly anticipated new EP DIM today via Nettwerk Records; listen/share HERE. SYML calls the record a “loss exploration,” and through its five tracks meditates on the various forms that grief can take. On April 23, he will debut a live performance of “DIM” online with “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” for their #PlayAtHome series.
“This EP is largely about losing those close to us,” says SYML. “Calling it DIM really applies to the light we carry during our time here. When those lights go out, it’s this sort of dimming process, but rather than living in that sadness – even though I think that’s a really healthy thing to do, to stay in that cozy, warm blanket sadness sometimes – it’s about honoring what that light was, and realizing that there’s still that same light in all of us that are still here.”
SYML shared the EP’s most recent single “STAY CLOSE” – an intensely personal track about his father’s battle with cancer – earlier this year; check it out HERE and listen to the pared-down version HERE. The track followed debut single “TRUE,” unveiled on New Years’ Day and praised in Billboard as “a soothing signal of better days ahead”; listen HERE.
DIM finds SYML working for the first time with an outside producer, Paul Meany (Twenty One Pilots), with additional mixing support from Joe Visciano (SZA, Earl Sweatshirt). “People like Paul and Joe act as mirrors instead of wrecking balls,” says SYML. “They showed me different angles of my songs and creative process that have ultimately made each better. When you find people like that to collaborate with, it’s a feeling of equal parts excitement and humility.”
Brian Fennell is a self-taught producer, programmer and engineer as well as guitarist, percussionist and classically trained pianist with deep roots in the Pacific Northwest. SYML, Welsh for ‘simple’ and pronounced ‘sim-muhl,’ is Fennell’s solo project after departing from the Seattle indie-rock band Barcelona, which he started shortly after college and toured with for over a decade. He shared his self-titled debut in 2019 with the now Platinum-certified single “Where’s My Love” and the wordless EP You Knew It Was Me in November 2020.
SYML – DIM
1. STAY CLOSE
2. BLACK TEETH
3. TRUE
4. YES AND KNOW
5. DIM