Laryssa Kim – Contezza
Contezza
Laryssa Kim
Album
Ambient
Louis Pelingen
September 10, 2024
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August 29, 2024
Tracks in this feature
Tracks in this release
Nowadays, it is common for people to be prescribed a variety of songs – via spotify or another streaming platform – that is designed to get them through the day. Would we call this a playlist – as the aforementioned platforms do – or a soundtrack? The two terms might seem similar at first but are drastically different. A ‘playlist’ cobbles together songs that are carefully constructed by streaming algorithms based on what the listener’s taste might be and what they are most likely to want to listen to based on their listening habits. These algorithms take into account your personal tastes, but they have an inbuilt penchant for popular and commercially viable artists.
The latter term, ‘soundtrack', differs itself from a playlist through the basis of resonance and sincerity, usually associated with movies, games and TV shows, it is a sonic package with proper consideration of pacing and consistency within the songs, it is designed to brighten lighter moments and darken those that happen in shadow. When done correctly, it can be a balm that a listener will cling to dearly, with the entire package intensifying personal memories and feelings within their life. You are prescribed a playlist. You live a soundtrack.
On here, this is happening, archie chooses to explore the power of the soundtrack. The album that archie presents is full of personable slice-of-life sounds and warm and sunny elements. The aptly-titled after gazing sun settles the listener with an explicitly shoegaze banger, archie’s calming vocals merely peaking over the sludge of a My Bloody Valentine-coded wall of sound. It then transitions to lovers’ hands, where an acoustic sequence feels lovingly close and homely, an intimate scene decorated with dainty organic synth arrangements.
This intimate space also comes through in alone in Tokyo, a song where the listener is ensconced in a quiet part of a big city, able to meditate amid the big crowds and noise of an urban landscape. But underneath all that fuzzy exterior, there is an anxiety that’s hiding within the words. Acting as an additional layer that opens up more within these sun-touched scenes, the listener is drawn to the deeper emotions of the protagonist. Hiding within the graceful harmonies and shuffling melodies of lens, archie’s lyricism displays the lingering pang of yearning. “Whatever you do / however I feel / we’ll be forever”. This pang soon overwhelms as the place we hid it puts it all out in the clearing, with archie completely singing in English as the glinting synths and lockstep percussion ruffle around his sullen vocals.
Musing on the past that the protagonist is gloating over, it is a mindset that soon becomes worse as the listener observes the protagonist feeling less optimistic on soon? with its hushed melodies and guitar strumming and sing me to sleep where the protagonist becomes numbed, resorting to sleeping in bed as means to find any semblance of comfort. Ending the arc in a grounded emotion as this is happening allows the listener another wistful cinematic breather from those emotions.
here, this is happening is an album to live with and by, archie embeds a lasting brilliance that illuminates a deeper story. The album is not just energetic in its highs and empathetic in its lows, the care the artist has taken seems to give it a precious innateness. A feeling of personal affection.
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