This, the lead single from August Kamp’s latest album, reconnecting.everything is an enticing and compelling mission statement for a collection of music seven years in the making. And like the album it points to, “Our Distinction Between Work and Play” is an ever-evolving, non-conformist, experimental cocktail of analog warmth and digital chill, a counterpoint of humanity and machine, a blend of shimmering, visionary pop and future potential.
It is also a song of two halves: the first, a slightly confusing yet always compelling array of dreamlike haze and acoustic rhythms, fuzzy nostalgia and sonic adventure; the second, a neo-soulful groove through the gentle future funk of pastures new. But, of course, with August Kemp, it is never quite as simple as that. Sometimes music, the best music at least, is hard to put into words; language does have its limits, and this is one of those times. After all, music is something to be immersed in and experienced, rather than read about and have described to you. That said, I have a job to do!
As an advertisement for an album, as a glimpse into a new sonic world, as a marker for musical discussions about where technology will take us and who we will be when we get there, as a debate about where the interface between music and emotion, art and experimentation lies, her music is nothing short of revolutionary.
August Kemp makes music that borders on the philosophical, each piece seemingly its own rhetorical statement. And in a world that seems to have reduced music to slices of throwaway fun, that is not only impressive, it is imperative.
