With the release of the single "Play Me A Christmas Song", Stephen Dowd manages to bottle the very specific, blue-hued silence that falls over a living room once the wrapping paper has been cleared away. It is a curious thing, really, how a melody can act less like a sound wave and more like the smell of a candle that was blown out five...

Marina Maximilian Blumin, better known by her stage name Marina Maximilian, is a performer from Israel who specialises in singing, songwriting and acting. She competed in the fifth season of the reality music competition programme Kokhav Nolad and finished in second place overall. https://soundcloud.com/marinamaximilian/lord-save-me-acoustic At the age of fifteen, Blumin performed in Hanoch Levin's play Requiem at the Cameri Theater. Two years later, at the age of...