By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring Jon Mckiel’s vibes based jubilee HEX and Kit Sebastian’s breezy yet dramatic album NEW INTERNATIONALE!
Kit Sebastian – NEW INTERNATIONALE
Genre: Tropicalia, Neo-Psychedelia, Jazz-Funk
Favorite Tracks: “Camouflage,” “The Kiss,” “Bul Bul Bul”
The process of touring can be its own blessing and its own hell, yet Kit Sebastian managed to create something on the road despite the turmoil that comes with it. The duo has been putting together albums that incorporate all sorts of genres such as funk, jazz, and disco, infusing them with elements from Turkish and French Pop. On their newest third album, NEW INTERNATIONALE, they’ve only managed to seek out newer points of reference with their musical adventures.
Created during a tour across the world, as well as during breaks from that exhausting travel, the album allows Kit Sebastian to expand their ranges as they delve further into multiple world influences such as yé-yé, tropicalia, and Anatolian rock, which only allows their usual tangents to take on a more melodic flair. Spinning together these inspiration points makes the overall sound of NEW INTERNATIONALE leap with several expressions all across the board, from the giddy instrumental flourishes to Kit Martin’s wider vocal inflections that eventually accentuate the dramatic swings within these songs. The energetic Turkish funk spin on cuts, such as “Bul Bul Bul” and “Ellerin Ellerimde,” finds Kit’s vocals coming off as jaunty and playful, fitting the former cut’s frolicking rhythms and the latter cut’s glorious groove sections.
This spread of tones expands even further. On “Faust,” with its adventurous funk passages from the acoustic and low-end instrumentation, there’s a dramatic energy that Kit imparts remarkably. On the title track, with its swivels towards psychedelic jazz arrangements, there is a serious projection that she doubles down on, fitting the observant political edges of its writing. Compare that with songs like the ravishing “Camouflage”—where Kit Martin and Merve Erdem provide riveting vocal harmonies over the sharper melodic throughlines—or the grand yearning swells of “The Kiss,” on which the crescendos soar to gorgeous peaks. This tonal characteristic presents some tension in Kit Sebastian’s musical escapade, reflective of how their influences created a sense of escapism amidst the political strife that was occurring during the 60s.
It is in the songwriting element that Kit Sebastian pulls together the dramatic tension lurking within this striking set of melodies. Best described as coming from one line in “Camouflage”—“Politics and love are the same”—the whole album is essentially grappling with the tumultuous nature of love, interspersed with how the troubling nature of politics can dissipate and dismantle one’s own joy, control, and freedom in a country that people are living in. But this amplifies the dramatic pieces within, grasping the yearning desire for love and hope even despite the horrors of where you call home. It’s a historical viewpoint that Kit Sebastian is completely aware of, as on songs like “Metropolis” and “Göç Me,” they reflect upon the experience of immigration and how living in an unfamiliar space can provide its brand of discomfort, whether that be reflecting upon the sense of freedom that they now have or feeling a sense of loneliness, as the people that they love and care about aren’t with them in the new place they’re living in. All of this eventually ties together in the self-titled track, where there is an observation of how all of those past historical junctures lead to both hope and despair, slowly leading to the cutting statements that end the record with an open-ended future: “Collective salvation in the making / Formation of the New international / Is this another adamant march toward catastrophe or an overture to the age of revolutionary action?”
Thrilling, dramatic, and cutting in its lyrical weight, Kit Sebastian has a new layer of brilliance with NEW INTERNATIONALE. Knowledgeable of the past and anticipating where it all leads, we can only wait for what is to come. You can check out Kit Sebastian’s impactful music on Bandcamp. [Louis Pelingen]
Jon Mckiel – HEX
Genre: Alternative, Folk
Favorite Tracks: “Under Burden,” “Hex”
Not to toot my own horn, but I clocked Jon Mckiel immediately into HEX. Like, tell me this 10-track effort isn’t “Post-COVID-Era Jimmy Buffett.” You can’t, right? What’s that really mean? Buffett’s all about the joys of abandoning the world for your own paradise of cheap margs and middle-aged beauties. (LIYL: off-brand tropical vibes, shooters, and freedom). Only folks nowadays can’t connect—we need something nuanced and emotionally complicated as a stand-in. It’s no cheeseburger in paradise, but HEX is just that.
The title track presents a baseline for this post-apocalyptic trop-rock, as McCiel unfurls a ballad about being hexed—the perfect encapsulation of our own ceaseless slog into the bummer doomsday. “The Fix” is practically built for sipping mai tais on some Jamaican resort—but the glitchy samples make it seem like the place burned down and the drinks were spiked with psychotropics. Oh, and “Under Burden” is the theme song for when we’re transformed into a Caribbean SIMS expansion. Not every track equally facilitates this “post-truth reggae.” The two-part “Memory Screen” is an overreach, focusing too much on slightly hacky tropes of technology and memory. (And “Pt. 2” is mostly screechy junk noise harshing my mellow.) But everything else—plus sunshine-generating earworms “Lady’s Mantle” and “Concrete Sea”—capture this multifaceted “gimmick,” doing so with a pace and wit that makes the spiked slush go down smooth.
But why an island record for a world with increasingly fewer islands? Mckiel’s connected to a tradition of the singer as carefree bum, an unintended guru humming wisdom into the world. It’s only the themes that change—the anxiety of modern life; technology and human interaction; and this latent desire to run away when we simply can’t. What you get, then, is a potent experience, and one that engages our fears and constraints with heart without disconnecting from the world’s very real woes. Buffett’s shtick is watching the world burn from your island; Mckiel’s interested in carving out your own island time amid the chaos. Does it make the world better? Somewhat, as Mckiel has this hugely charming presence. It’s less about escapism and more about contextualizing your fears/insecurities; to make an island amid the madness, and to survive the best you can. The tide will consume everything, and your coconut contains microplastics, but the right music can ground you in embracing the experience and finding the fleeting bits of joy. Like walking on a beach of trash and used needles, or having a luau near a tire fire.
There’s some real layers and context to HEX that push it beyond these “gimmicky” impressions. But don’t you want an LP that might not dissolve your cares, but wrap them in the warmth of knowing you’re not alone in facing slow-burning social decay? Or, an LP as white noise for your panic attack at a beach resort? If so, drop the needle on HEX, slam some Coronas, and watch as our modern apocalypse is bathed in warm glows and potent vibes. Listen to it over on Bandcamp. [Chris Coplan]
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