Thankfully our shared, imposed cultural down-time seems to have yielded a prolific bloom of creativity and beautiful work from countless artists and craftspeople.
A prolific bloom of creativity and beautiful work
Music fundamentally changed pace in 2020—painfully at times, sometimes beautifully. Few live moments brought the flow of events back into a much more personal and introspective experience, out of necessity to both artist and listener. (I’d wager that headphone usage increased considerably, though we may never have the data.) Thankfully our shared, imposed cultural down-time seems to have yielded a prolific bloom of creativity and beautiful work from countless artists and craftspeople.
Eight Experiments by Kilowatts is one such result, though its origins no doubt predate our present circumstances. A standout of the year in semi-quarantine, I’ve played this album often while driving to and from my sparsely-populated lab in suburban Colorado, past the foothills of the Rockies and onward toward Denver. It’s been a good friend along for the ride.
Pushing through deeply technical work in relative isolation as I do at work—with the joy of human heart and experience—fits this album well. It is perhaps the most precise and mature work in an already quality-heavy discography by producer Jamie Watts, and in my opinion, a (now) classic of 2020. Each track dances between blissful mechanics and human instrumentation, keeping the warm, living light strong in the middle of the machines. Like many of his releases, it walks a sturdy line between expert sound design and laid back jazz.
We thankfully didn’t have to wait that long to get more from Kilowatts. February of 2021 saw the re-master and vinyl pressing of Eight Experiment’s once-removed predecessor, Six Silicates. (In the middle lies a similar sibling, Seven Succulents.) With the original already a great listen unto itself, the re-master of Six Silicates notably improves the listening experience, no doubt in part motivated by the requirements of vinyl pressing and the turning of time. (Readers can still pick up the vinyl as of this writing.)
Oh! A bonus: Kilowatts just released a new track alongside poet/lyricist Anand Petigara under the hyper-glitch-hop project Super Galactic Expansive. It is an exquisite exercise in future-produced tech lyricism. While very much in theme with the preceding releases under the alias, “Enter Stage Right” is more upward looking, forward moving and happily energetic—a soundtrack for another somehow content moment in the midst of quarantine.
Six Silicates and Eight Experiments are available on Kilowatts Music.
