Stranded By The Sea, A Serene New Voice Emerges

How Britt Lari’s “uh oh” moment became an “aha” moment

It was spring break 2020, and Britt Lari was watching the waves crash gracefully onto the sand in Punta Hermosa, Peru.

The 24 year-old electronic artist and vocalist had spent the last week in the small coastal town, roughly 34 miles south of Lima, surfing and spending time with her extended family. She was set to graduate from California State University, Northridge that spring, and she was still riding the high of having performed her first-ever live show in February. From the outside looking in, it would have seemed that Lari was living in absolute paradise.

There was just one problem. She had no idea when — or if — she would be allowed to leave.

Enter Corona…and a Different Persona

“I was terrified, not going to lie,” she said, her laughter echoing through our Google Hangouts screen. “I try to look at the bright side in every scenario, and in this case, I think there was none.”

At the end of March 2020, Lari had become one of the many voyagers stranded overseas when, faced with the coronavirus pandemic gripping the world, countries began to shut their borders down across the globe. Though the native Peruvian now lives in Los Angeles, Lari would have to stay at her relatives’ beachside apartment, unsure of how and when she could fly home. On top of that, she didn’t have her piano or a microphone to keep working on her music. With no real equipment and still a semester of school left to complete via Zoom, Lari quickly realized she’d have to improvise to maintain some semblance of sanity.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to go insane. I need something to do,’” she told me, sitting safe and sound again in her sun-filled Los Angeles apartment. I had asked about how quarantine was affecting her day-to-day music routine, but her story about creating an entirely new persona while being stranded in a small South American beach town was far from what I’d expected.

Lari has been creating electronic music under her given name, Britt Lari, since 2018. But looking out at the ocean that day in Punta Hermosa, another name floated to the surface of her mind: BIMINI.

The Birth of BIMINI

“Bimini is an island in the Bahamas,” she explained. “I remember watching Shark Week one time, and I just fell in love with this…