The story so far.
[ THE BEGINNING ]
In April 2019, Kim – at the time a 19y.o singer and songwriter with a burning passion for languages – decided to create an artistic persona to release covers and original songs on YouTube. Strong of a classical training and a natural inclination, Kim felt like this challenge would be extremely ambitious but not out of reach.
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The project, though, was not to be an average musician who’d release music “just because”; Kim had a very clear goal in mind: addressing that part of the audience that isn’t taken care of by mainstream artists, creating songs in different languages, about topics so often left out of public conversation.
To put it in Kim’s word «[…] some artists try to make music for the misfits, which I love, but not all misfits want to dye their hair fuschia and go to underground indie gigs, some of them want to play tabletop games and listen to Bach. And some want to do both.»
And thus, the Kimera Project was started. This name comes from two of Kim’s interests: the Korean language (in fact, Kim’s Korean name is Kim Hyera) and Greek mythology, in which a chimera is a compound of different animals (just like Kimera is a multi-layered character).
(^) Kim has also worked as a model.
[ THE FIRST STEPS ]
The months from October 2019 to June 2020 were used as a preparation period: accounts on social media such as Instagram and Twitter were created, covers of songs in different languages were published on YouTube, a logo and branding were prepared for when the right time would come…
And the right time came very soon, in July 2020, when Kimera finally published her first EP, Polaroid. As aforementioned, Kimera had a precise goal; and that is exactly the purpose the four tracks served: none of the songs are about love or breakups, they explore the theme of friendship from usual and less usual perspectives, and the main track YES (but actually no) incorporates not one, not two, not three, but seven different languages!
(^) Polaroid's cover art.
YES song also exists in a version translated to the Esperanto language, released on 11th June 2021 by the title of JES sed verdire ne.
(^) a picture taken on the set of JES's music video
During summer 2020, Kimera also got the chance to cooperate with Wizards of the Coast to work on Bardic Inspiration, a song and video based on the theme of Dungeons&Dragons. This time the song was in English only, but it tackled another main point of the Kimera Project: addressing an audience not taken care of by mainstream media. Kimera and WotC decided the video should display that “not only nerds play D&D”, which would fit the lyrics of the song perfectly since their message is that of believing in oneself, despite other people’s opinion.
(^) a frame from Bardic Inspiration's music video.