MOR – Where Does It Go? (No, Yeah, I Don’t Know)
Similar artists: GRANT, Kite, Fredrik Okazaki, Massive Attack
Genre: Indietronica
One of the best ways that your ears can naturally remix a song is to hear it from a distance. Led Zeppelin will sound like Donna Summer, and Kendrick Lamar could end up sounding like Dmitri Shostakovich. All you need to do is make sure that you hear from far away enough or that you restrict some of the flow of the sound toward your ear canals. MOR’s electro-mangled pop-rock sounds like that.
Why would you actually desire these kinds of changes to your favourite records? Because if you keep hearing them over and over again, they may very well stop being your favourites. Because music is meant to change. That goes even for the songs that already exist. And, most importantly, your mind never processes music the exact same way every time it hears it.
MOR’s “Where Does It Go? (No, Yeah, I Don’t Know)” takes on a 90s electro approach to pop music whereby pretty and familiar tones are given surgery. The facelift leaves the piece just barely resembling what it once looked like. It’s a way to repurpose old olds. This is all fine and good, but how about the terrific and emotional vocals?
Sonder – Global Slap
Similar artists: The Cure, Beastmilk, IDLES
Genre: Post-Punk, Shoegaze, Indie Rock
There are two types of songs in this world that we should be concerned with. There are those songs that get to the point quickly, delivering a memorable hook along the way, and there are those that function using an intricate layer of textures, creating a mood and trapping the listeners inside of it. The first is life as we’d like it to be, but the latter is what existence really feels like.
Both are valid, sure, but each requires a unique sort of devotion. The first involves a kind of blind faith in the power of a three-minute single to change the world. This kind of belief could, at worst, turn you into a madman or an old writer for the NME.
The songs that are built are texture and mood; however, they work much like hypnotism. By that, I mean that they do not work unless the subject is willing to let themselves be hypnotised. Some trust is needed.
Sonder’s “Global Slap” is a song that like a London cab driving through the rain, takes its time and shows you every curb. This is not a song meant to charm you with a smile but to draw you with some deep conversation. Like The Cure at their most proggy and uncompromising, this is music for the fateful. Letting yourself be hypnotized isn’t easy to commit to, but levitation is guaranteed.
