Arabada – MCAT
What does pure loneliness sound like, I ask? “Probably something like this” Arabada would answer. If forced to describe it, I’d say that It’s a languid, removed noise, filled with all the worlds’ confusion.
You’d think that a near-death experience would be accompanied by your favourite tune. But, if “MCAT” is any indicator, you’re likely to just get a bunch of radio stations fighting each other for frequency wave supremacy.
This tune feels like that to me. It’s gentle, yet unforgiving like the deepest winter. It features a lovely female voice, but one that sounds trapped in a jar for a hundred years. It’s a Bladerunner soundtrack for a future where music and feelings are on the way out.
“MCAT” is a technical marvel, a chillwave track with a focus. The melodies it flaunts are damaged, but the techno dance surrounding it keeps everything afloat for the entirety of this strange, cold tune.
Goodboy// – Something for my Head
Mentioning Kid A is the music critics’ version of Six Degrees of Separation. There’s something of latter-day Radiohead that really gets pens sharpened, and coffee poured down in the cigarette-smoke-filed offices of music scribes.
However, I assure you, I am not pulling a fast one on you. I’m about to compare “Something for my Head” by United Arab Emirates’s Goodboy// with Radiohead.
The artsy single in question swims in the same deep waters where obsessive-compulsion, a love of electronic music, and border-paranoia act as artistic sails. The single in question is an artsy mix of terrific indietronica production ideas and the nagging feeling that the walls may just be closing in on you.
With that being said, Goodboy// is more than a one-trick pony or imitator. Something for my Head builds in intensity as ideas pile on top of one another while the twiglike vocals loiter through the track.
