This a single from ILKAMA's upcoming album Superspeed. Follow our newsletter, Instagram or Mastodon, or ILKAMA's Bandcamp to get notified when the album drops.
I made a new track! 🎧 🍂☕️
We live in a time where it feels like you are rewarded for softening your edges, not taking up space, not feel too strongly about anything. Music, too, has become something that’s mostly meant to soothe, decorate, comfort. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe now we need soothing and comfort more than ever. But I think we lose something if we forget that music can also provoke, demand and disrupt, not just lyrically, and still be worth listening to. That’s where «Easy listening» came from.
This one started with the lyrics. I was checking out some new releases and I honestly don’t remember which ones, but I remember thinking: do we really need more of this? I’m so tired of that endless stream of well-produced, vibe-friendly, mood-safe background music. Where is the experimentation, the risk-taking? Where’s the weird? This is of course tied into the fucked up streaming model and playlist culture. It’s seeping into how people create and I hate it. I refuse to think that people are inherently «boring» or unoriginal. Of course, we’re all susceptible to influence and pressure (no one creates in a vacuum), but the way music is consumed today mutes individual impulses and nudges artists toward algorithm-driven trends, which sucks.
I wrote the lyrics to «Easy listening» as a sarcastic little pushback: “easy listening / let me make it easy for you / nothing demanding / everything in life’s already so challenging / so let’s not complicate it / understated is my thing!“. And then went on to making the most annoying, chaotic, noisy, repetitive and discordant track I’ve ever done.
The track leans into cacophony and discomfort and won’t make it onto any playlist, but it’s still a dancy, badass bop imo! I don’t expect you to listen all the way through, but if you do, you’ll be rewarded with a sexy MIDI-flute solo, “Some flute for your commute“! I hope you enjoy Easy listening as much as you enjoy Kings of Convenience etc. I know I do! 🎧
Video drops soon! And yes, it’s just as overstimulating as the track 🍂☕️
Easy listening is produced and performed by me.