Kai Mata is an Indonesian-American singer-songwriter currently based in everybody’s favorite city of Bali. As far as we know, “Time To Shine” is her debut full-length and what a mature record it is for an artist and musician that is just twenty years old. The album is soaked with numerous sunrises, pouring rains, endless landscapes and solemn travels. The leading role is of course handled by Kai Mata with all her talent and sincerity. Her voice handles with inspiring ease both the more laid-back tracks (“Magic”) and the bolder tunes (“Strays”, “Time To Shine” or “Good Morning, Beautiful”). Her guitar can both feel delicate and fragile or determined and playful. The music on the album is not only written with a feeling and perfection, it’s also arranged in a super smart and beautiful way with additional instruments never standing on the way but enhancing all nice musical ideas that the record is blooming with.

We can’t recommend this record enough, but we also recommend that you find Kai Mata on social media, there this neat short documentary about the recording process of “Time To Shine” and it really shows how much love was poured in this album. We are talking not only about Kai Mata but about the dedication and understanding of her whole team. Big ups to engineer Racka Bintara and producer Rizal Abduhadi from Tropical Folk Records for discovering and helping this talented artist rise and shine on the musical horizon.