In a dark room somewhere, someone is going blind trying to rewrite James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake” for a modern audience. Further downtown, a retired pensioner has decided to rebuild the Tower of Babel using matchsticks. And, of course, further up town, the most expensive music studio in town is kept going by a musician trying to recreate “Chinese Democracy” for the same budget.
Deep pockets are something worth desiring, sure. However, having unlimited amounts of cash or time rarely produces a better product. For one thing, it forces the artist not to set up clean rules for themselves. For another, it gets them so deep inside their own heads that they begin questioning every decision they make and never actually get anything finished.
quilium seems to operate by the notion that a creative idea is a creative idea that needs to immediately be put into the world. After all, there’s enough ugliness and plenty of sounds to ruin your day. How’s about something that might improve it? “can of whoopbass” is an electro lo-fi invite to look on the bright side for a change.
What does this entail? For one thing, a bit of humour, something that whoever attempts to reassemble “Chinese Democracy” cannot afford for themselves. Just listen to the opening track of this 23-strong song collection. “out of pocket” has a vague whiff of a breakbeat that feels like it falls in the mix slightly differently each time, but the dreamy chords and arpeggios give the song real warmth.
“soaring over the flood” contains a minimalist funk groove and spaced-out lead guitar lines meant to indicate some sort of narrow escape from danger. And, on “It Was a Revelation,” quilium’s singing ends up resembling Wayne Coyne’s at his post-weekend hippie best.
In fact, the greatest strength of quilium’s collection, besides the fact that few of the tracks linger any longer than they should, is the general feeling of optimism, the euphoria of creating beautifully out-of-focus lo-fi rock short stories and sending them out into the world to find a home.
“never was cut out” sounds like the kind of echo-filled beat that could play in your headphones on repeat all the way to work and back. “the goal is to be better people” is a kind of dub mantra for positivity. And, “feel no consequence,” the closest the album has to a single, takes a page out of 90s slacker rock, but somehow makes the pacing even slower and gets the vocal notes to sound like they’re part of some newly unearthed musical scale.
Where does it all leave us? Hopefully, looking for own strategies to be creative and contribute to the world. “can of whoopbass” is proudly imperfect and its author is happy to share it with whoever in the world can have their life enriched by it.
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