It’s hard enough figuring out who you actually are with a lifetime, often, feeling like a deadline that you’ll never meet. But it’s all the harder to, on top of that, tell others who you are, get them to connect, make them relate to your story. But anyone who has succeeded has, practically, secured one big win at the game of life. chromestar wants that victory right now!
Even the greatest artists must approach this task with some apprehension. Sure, the human experience is similar for all of us. Yes, anyone you meet must have undergone similar challenges to yours. But that also makes it a problem. Do you really have something profound enough, or sufficiently entertaining, to make them take a step back from their life to pay attention to yours?
chromestar understands what it involves when you try to make modern listeners glued to your personal journey, but takes on the task anyway. “oasis” is a collection of highly personal stories told through musical formats that should appeal and make sense to anyone who’s recently received their musical recommendations through apps like TikTok.
These influences, in themselves, are game changers. They’re the equivalent of a well-stocked music shop or a carefully curated record collection. Just listen to the Prince-like intro of “new phase,” or the opening song, “illusion of love,” that blends 80s-styled shoegaze with heavily-produced, re-tuned vocals.
The mix of old and new is also apparent in the song that gives the album its name, “Oasis.” The drum machine and synth-heavy arrangement might lull you into a trance-like state while drawing inspiration from 80s pop. Meanwhile, however, the confessional, no-holds-barred tone of the lyrics is entirely a new and welcome trend.
There’s more slalloming through old sounds reinterpreted to fit realisations about the modern world on songs like “twist,” with its minimalist disco-like groove, and the trap beats and lyrics about the anxiety of moving forward heard on “stuck in time.”
And while the experimental production and pitch shifting of “out of my head” recalls contemporary acts like 100 Gecs, everything leads back to the emotional confessions with which the album started.
“need u,” possibly the album’s strongest track sounds like Michael Jackson ballad being given a hyperpop makeover. It’s one more song where Chromestar, assisted on this track by Flatline, allows vulnerability to permeate the music. Why? How else would everyone who hears this record relate to these stories? “OASIS” is a collection of personal stories and universal truths.
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