With the release of singer-songwriter Dia Frampton and music composer Joseph Trapanese’s latest musical collaboration Archis this coming February 23, you ought to prepare yourself for a truly unique musical listening experience.

In the past couple of weeks, the duo has been dropping a few singles off their six-song EP to be released to the public on Tuesday, February 24 through Nettwerk Records. The night before, they will present two live orchestra performances in concert at Los Angeles’ Swing House to celebrate the release.

“It’s very difficult,” Dia has confessed.

Archis, a musical collaboration that has merged the symphonic instrumentation of the orchestra with pop vocals, is something beyond Dia has ever done in her career. As she has tried to unload everything that she has learned in music from the past ten years of her career, she has never quite known if she was doing the “right” thing.

On the song “Blood,” which was released to the public last May 2014 on The Music Ninja, Dia notes, “This song is very personal. I wrote it on my own, in my room at a not so good time in my life.”

Noting that producers within the Los Angeles music scene never wanted her to write about “sad stuff, or painful things, or being afraid,” she mentions, “I believe in strength, but I believe in vulnerability… There’s things that have happened in my life that have just caused change and I’m never the person who has been super optimistic about it.”

With “Blood,” she continues, “It’s about overcoming something but not coming out on the other end looking like Beyonce. It’s about coming out and having those dark sides with you that you endured along the way.”

http://www.hillydilly.com/2015/02/archis-bittersweet/

A little more than a week ago, the duo also released the second single “Bittersweet” on Hillydilly.

It’s a rather quiet, introspective song–a powerful ballad that boasts of the sweet sentiments of the lifelong struggle of pursuing a career in music while accepting the new changes that an individual inevitably undergoes in life. The song is both passionate and technical; touching and tense; bitter and sweet, just as the title evokes.

Thundering drumbeats lightly drive the song; overwhelming synthesized soundscapes create an atmosphere of falling through air as Frampton’s airy vocals naturally carry us along as she cries, “Take these tired wings / Home is calling you to sleep.”

The feelings evoked through this one are overwhelming, declaring it one of my own bittersweet favorites.

http://diffuser.fm/exclusive-premiere-archis-let-me-love/

Lastly, the duo released “Let Me Love” just earlier this week on Diffuser.fm.

A rather upbeat, “spunky” song, powerful horns trumpet through Trapanese’s wonderful filmic soundscape; with Frampton’s vocals, they’ve created something truly unique.

It’s ultimately an anthemic song about diving into love and letting yourself love–wholeheartedly.

“‘Let Me Love,’ to me, is about becoming so engrossed in something that it eventually takes such a strong hold of you, that you can’t escape,” Frampton tells Diffuser. “It’s about becoming aware of your surroundings, or in a way, finally waking up and becoming present in the moment and realizing that the path you chose wasn’t necessarily the most sincere one. It’s about killing a piece of yourself so that you can re-emerge a new, and hopefully better, human being.”

The work Frampton and Trapanese have put forth within Archis is both intricate and heartfelt. From these songs alone, they have the ability to take you through an entirely emotional musical experience. The sentiments of Frampton’s writing are heightened by Trapanese’s musical cues, as Frampton equally holds up well to Trapanese’s powerful musical ambition.

A unique pairing and project, it will be interesting to see how far Archis will go.

But, one thing’s for sure: “Love is all that [they] have.”

Look out for the release of the EP on February 24th with a celebratory performance release on the 23rd! It’s been a long-time coming for Dia, but fans–old and new alike (as with myself)–are in for a pleasant surprise.