There is an interesting sonic battle at the heart of this new single from August Kamp, well, perhaps not so much a battle but certainly a beguiling sonic ebb and flow and attraction of opposites. Having created a strange, off-kilter electronic pop platform, Kamp then looks for ways to tether it, smooth it, and keep it from becoming too fractured.
This she does by adding wonderful vocal textures and digital beats, but even these don’t always travel the sonic landscape in conventional ways. The grooves, where they exist, are wonderfully inconsistent and skittering, the sonics a hypnotic blend of analog motifs and digital dexterity, and the whole sound reflects her exploration of where human music making and digital technology, and their potential and possibility, start and end.
This magpie-like collection of sounds, these questioning vocals, neatly reflect a big series of questions, one very pertinent to where we find ourselves today. How do we use the machines we build to bring us closer rather than push us further apart? How do we retain enough control of technology that it fulfills and advances our needs rather than enslaves us? If progress is inevitable, and of course, it is, how do we ensure its journey is on our own terms?
Music is great at asking questions; perhaps music is also part of the answer. With artists like August Kamp around, there is no “perhaps” about it.
