I first discovered this dreamy duo at the 2018 Kaz’Out festival in Mauritius, where they put on a beautiful ambient and melodic house set. The journey between dream and reality, this is the experience felt through their sounds. From the island of Réunion, Økuna is comprised of Savinien and Aviran who both produce and sing, whilst Savinien also plays the guitar and does visual work.
Released in the last year, their debut album ‘Soundtrack For A Dream’ is a delightful infusion of modern dance music together with gentle euphoria. 12 tracks exploring the balance between the sunset party mood against the morning’s calm reflection. 12 tracks reflecting the beauty of sound.
Here are some of the songs which especially caught my attention. ‘Eye Light’ brings a smile with charming, intricate textural elements such as a the beautiful oriental strings all on top of a lively, syncopated rhythm. ‘Back To Life’ featuring Netsiah delivers a trendy electronic style production with a sweet, loving vocal. ‘Chrysalide’ is an enchanting moment of passion and reflection, the deep waves of sound dance in the air drawing you into a state of wonder. ‘Out Of Time’ featuring Nyx Lion & Deliwe is a wildcard bringing a fighting spirit and hip hop flavour from the fiery vocals and dark atmosphere. ‘Luna’ captivates your soul with a deep, mesmerising air flowing through with such strong energy radiating from it which lift you high above the clouds - breathtaking.
As Økuna rise in the industry, they took a moment to speak with us…
Tell us about yourselves, how you each started out in music and how you got together as a duo.
Savinien: First of all, Aviran and I don’t have the same influences. I was more into rock music, whereas he was more into electronic and pop music. Everything started when Aviran made a remix of one my old demo songs which resulted in a pretty interesting creation. From there, we decided to continue our journey together and created our first music band DELIWE in 2013 which was more like an electro-rock music band. In 2016 we wanted to experiment new musical things but also to create more visual stuff and mix it together with music. We basically wanted to have a more conceptual project. This led us to the creation of ØKUNA!
Aviran: Yes and I would add that I started music in high school, when I was 11 I started with DJing, but I also wanted to create my own stuff and express myself in another way. That's why I decided to try beatmaking and remixing songs from other artists, like the one mentioned by Savinien earlier. Years after years, we kept creating new tracks in our bedroom until we finally create DELIWE first, and ØKUNA more recently.
You have a distinct identity with the eye mask, what is the idea behind this
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