Lady HD takes the reins on new Chifa EP

Lady HD’s EP, Chifa, is being released today, Dec. 4, 2020.

Chifa‘s cycle began with the release of the first single, “Whatever Comes Next (NOCANDO).” This song has a 70s feel, but rides an 80’s groove, met with 2020 production quality. But who is Lady HD?

Lady HD is less of a group and more of a musical project, with frontman Ciaran Wall at the helm. Wall is a 29-year-old resident of the Philadelphia, Penn area. His interest in music began at age twelve, but he cannot talk about his interest in music without first talking about his parents, who are both immigrants to the United States.

His mother immigrated from Peru and his father immigrated from Ireland. These cultural backgrounds feed into everything in Wall’s life, especially his music. In fact, the EP title, “chifa”, is a term for Chinese food with Peruvian ingredients. “I felt like that was the vibe of the record. There are a lot of different people and pieces combined here,” Wall explained.

Lady HD was started when Wall was living in Los Angeles in 2016. “I befriended this guy who was a very talented drummer, and he was an aspiring producer. Now he does more mixing work, but he started a label with his dad out west and they wanted Lady HD or myself to be the first project. So when I moved back to Philly, they flew me out and I did an EP, and we recorded everything together,” Wall tells. However, none of the music from this original project is featured on Chifa. For this project, Wall set out on his own to make a name for himself in the Philadelphia indie scene. He currently is not signed to a label, but he has a team of people who voluntarily help him with the various aspects of managing himself as a musician.

Although Wall plays guitar, piano, drums, synthesizer and an impressive range of Peruvian instruments, he did have help from several key musicians when producing the lead single. “Whatever Comes Next (NOCANDO)” features vocalist Carly Brand, guitarist Beau Gordon and drummer Alex Held.

The other two songs on the EP mainly feature Wall himself for vocals, instrumentation and production. “The rest of it was my first time taking the reins production wise, and kind of taking it home, sanding down all the parts and recutting stuff. It was a lot to take on, but it was really fun to do all that, because you learn a lot.” Wall’s colleague Karl Rieders of Kawari Sound played keys for the record as well as assisting with arrangement. Wall was able to record this EP at Rieder’s studio.

As for the rest of Chifa, listeners can continue to expect a psychedelic sound with a growing blend of genres. “The roots of it is funk and grungy tones. It has a lot of repetition with South American roots,” Wall said. His lyricism is based on themes of hesitation towards commitment and accepting love from others. He states that his goal is to get people on the dance floor, while crafting a story with his work.

As for the chaos of 2020, Wall does not see a better time to release the project he’s been working on for the last two years. He states, “The world is on fire and I’m just writing songs, so I might as well just put it out already!”

Tune in to keep up with “whatever comes next” for Ciaran Wall and Lady HD.