A masterpiece of emotional dance music created in Switzerland by Numa. The music video takes place in an old bank safe, starring dancer Giovanna Doria and videographer Julian Kaufmann.
Numa has placed his musical go-live exactly at the beginning of the Corona pandemic, March 2020. At that time nobody could have known that this was just the beginning of a long pandemic. It didn’t look like an almost one and a half year forced break for rock, pop, hip hop or dance music. Many people started to release music and many tracks got lost in the sand : Because the focus was on other things than new music, and because for many bands, musicians, labels and agencies neither live presentations nor other promotional activities were possible. Many things went down and never appeared again. Not so “Always You” by Numa
With his first track he created a small fanbase across the Atlantic. The light-footed deep house track, which the then 19-year-old Basel native sent on its way via Spotify, quickly reached 10,000 plays without much promotion or massive airplays. “I remember well that a year ago I was totally happy to have already reached 10,000 people,” says Numa aka Manuel today. In the meantime, the track’s account balance stands at just 400’000 plays, with most fans plugging in their headphones in Mexico, Colombia and Chile. In Switzerland, very few fans of electronic music know him.
However this article this is not about “Always You”, but about the music video for the track “Impressions” from Numa’s debut album. It got released in April 2021, when it was hailing sub-zero temperatures at night and thick clouds and a cold breeze were whistling and stinging raindrops across the country during the day. In contrast, Numa’s track knocks on the rainy window pane with a light-handed piano and percussion figure before Tanja Alison’s vocals pick us up. In form of the young ballet dancer Giovanna Doria he takes us past the rock’n’roll wall-of-fame of L’Unique Bar in Basel’s “Gerbergässlein” to the safe in the bar “Die Mitte”.
The space, with its ornate floor tiles and swanky, metal bank lockers, is a popular video shooting location, so it may already look familiar to some people. Nonetheless, the fluid and highly aesthetic moves of this all-white dressed dancer make this place shine in a different light. The way Giovanna Doria dances her youthful insouciance around the ears of the luxury stink of the discreet hoard of old Basel money also pleased Theater Basel’s ballet director Richard Wherlock: “Super duper keep up the great work,” the ballet director and choreographer posted to his student’s Instagram channel. We say, “Totally agree.”