Katmando x Pussel – Never Let It Go
Similar artists: Off The Meds, Baba Stiltz, Yung Lean
Genre: Indietronica
Where does the chorus to a song go? Have a listen to about a hundred songs from the classic era of rock n’ roll, preferably ones that you don’t already know, and I’m sure that you’ll be able to identify exactly the moment the chorus needs to come in. Most likely, you’ll even be able to hum something similar to the chorus part before actually hearing it. That will not happen in Katmando and Pussel’s collaboration. And it’s not merely a result of the fact that there’s no clear chorus here.
The fact that you can identify when a song’s hook needs to come in or how it is supposed to sound makes you as experienced, in many ways, as the artists who made the music. This says a lot about your cleverness and style, sure. But it says more about how predictable pop music has been for a long time. I’d like to think that if Hendrix or Lennon were here, they wouldn’t bore themselves or their audiences with making easy-to-digest pop songs.
Katmando & Pussel’s “Never Let It Go” sounds like the kind of soundtrack music developed for a major video game franchise and rejected by the company producing it on the grounds that it is too weird. A lot and very little seems to go on in this piece of arranged sound. It does not feature a chorus or anything vaguely resembling a hook. But it does not waste your time. It’s music that engages with the listener by putting them at ease and shooting them into space. It’s music for deep dreaming.
Jacob Robillard – Keep Moving On
Genre: Electronica, Psychedelic
People have less and less time for themselves. It’s worse for the ones that, on paper, should have time to spare. You end up getting all these billionaires willing to spend it all in order to go to the jungle with some guru who might slip them the secret to health, a good life, and, of course, a good dose of inner peace. Why spend all that time and money when you have Jacob Robillard’s music?
The fact is that is that in the modern world, in the highly advanced and also painfully boring parts of the world, music is most people’s best bet to finding some sort of peace. It’s the one trance that they can believe in. The rest of them are only designed to get dragging their feet into a shopping mall.
It takes a while for Jacob Robillard’s “Keep Moving On” to turn on truly, and even then, it seems to accompany the feeling of waking up from a deep sleep. This is not music where you skip to the hook and play something else. Ideally, this is music to get lost in for a long time. How does Robillard achieve this? It’s part studio trickery, part pure inspiration. The results, however, are clear.
