New York artist Olivia Brown has been an active Blend contributor since January 2014. After various collaborations on the platform, Olivia launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to get into the studio with Bart Migal (Bjork, Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth) to finish her collaboration record entitled ELECTRIFY which was released this month.

You can listen to early versions of the tracks on Blend which became We Didnt Even Know and A Love Like This on the record:

We caught up with Olivia to dig into her process of collaboration, crowdfunding, and releasing her album. Check it out:

“My process is to find the instrumental track(s) that grabs my attention. (vibe, groove, feel). I import the track to garageband and begin by listening. I let the instrumental track speak to me/show me where the verse should be, where the chorus should go, where and when the intro, outro and interludes should start and stop. Once the melody is in place, i write the lyrics and record the demo. During the demo recording I frequently add harmony lines and an occasional counterpoint melody.

After 8 months, with more than 20 songs collaborations complete, I began to think about releasing some of them as a album. In Oct 2014 I successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign to fund the album and began working with producer/engineer Bart Migal (Bjork, Kristin Chenoweth, Audra McDonald). With the songs recorded, mixed and mastered by May 2015, my next step was to think about album packaging and art. I gathered a team of talented/fierce women to take the pictures and design the cover.

The completed project Olivia Brown: ELECTRIFY was released digitally on June 16, 2015. Physical copies and a release party are in the works. I’ve continued to collaborate on blend throughout the album process. To date I have over 34 completed songs - Enough for a follow up album :) Check out my site to learn more about me”

Stream the full record on Spotify: