Cassettes for my label’s first release are finally done and shipping! Limited edition of 50 hand-numbered copies of Saigon Would Be Seoul’s debut album ‘Everywhere Else Left Behind’. These were a lot of work but really happy how they turned out.
Saigon Would Be Seoul is the new solo project of Mirza Ramic from the American electronic music duo Arms and Sleepers. While spending most of his adult life in the US, Mirza was born in Bosnia & Herzegovina and lived there until 1992, when the Bosnian War forced his family to flee the country. Mirza and his mother would spend the next few years moving across continents, countries and states as refugees — living in Tunisia, Egypt, Italy, Croatia, Czech Republic, Arizona, and Massachusetts. Mirza’s father did not survive the war; he was killed by a mortar shell in 1993.
This personal journey of trauma, loss and survival is at the core of Saigon Would Be Seoul. Mirza’s mother, a piano teacher, introduced the piano to him at the age of 6. Subsequently, the piano became the one constant in their lives as they kept changing environments and moving further away from Bosnia & Herzegovina. Piano, and music in general, became important mechanisms for processing memories and finding healing.
