Ahead of the autumn release of their debut EP, slowing down, sadplanet drops their second single from it, “please.” Here, they give us an immersive cocoon of sound, not dense enough to be fully shoegaze, more beat-driven than the classic dreampop sound, too smart to be merely indie, too lush and detached to be just pop. It kaleidoscopes through all of those sounds…and more, but is, as with all great music, more than the sum of those parts; you don’t look at the individual colors, yet you remain transfixed by the overall hypnotic effect.
It is luminous and drifting, its sonic clouds often gossamer and seethrough, at other times seeming to gather into more all-consuming soundbanks, disorientating, disarming, and dissonant.
And as the song’s textures and tones seem to ebb and flow to create a floating dynamic, Kyra Ho’s vocal sits somewhere between an intimate whisper in the ear and a sonic ritual, the chorus almost pleading in its sentiment, a desperate voice consumed by the loss of a friendship, or at least the realization of its true nature and finally seeing it for what it always was. A prayer for that return to that earlier innocence, perhaps.
Only a few years into the band’s existence, and they are already redefining the broad dream-pop/shoegaze sound for a more discerning, more modern audience. And on the strength of “please,” and “do you?” which preceded it, that debut EP can’t come quickly enough.
