Live Review: Mizan ‘7 billion’ (Official Video)

Never has a song about the end of the world been so peaceful and beautiful. 24 year old Ethiopian born singer MIZAN, has just released a new video to accompany her delicate doomsday track ‘7 Billion’.

Mizan purposefully ensures that her song avoids the usual in-yer-face angry rants of the revolutionary voice, and instead makes the song hard hitting in its serenity. Her voice wavers above and below the droning piano, fading in and out reflectively as she sings, “I’m the centre of my world, but 7 billion have a say, 7 billion have a heart, 7 billion find a way”.

The video manages to feel simultaneously rushed and static – she is always in motion, either zooming past countryside on a bus, or a pacing through fields, or in a lift quickly descending, or on a busy motorway. Cleverly though, it’s never Mizan who is actually moving but the vehicles and machines around her, consolidating the idea that she’s the centre of events, ‘the centre of my world’. There’s no lip syncing or dance moves either, which makes the video feel even more like a silent film or piece of contemporary art.

The song is structured around only her voice and her piano, but she masterfully creates a rich and textured sound with just these two instruments. The piano particularly offers a slow, down tempo rhythm that undulates soberly through the same few notes, providing a beat, structure and cold-hearted basis for the track.

‘7 Billion’ is taken from Mizan’s Dark Blue EP which is out on November 6 via Terrible Records.

Words by Katie Rowley

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