The music of Dylan Anderson, who records and performs under the alias Kakune, is arresting in its detail and precision, but that’s not necessarily your initial impression. First comes the atmosphere—airy, spacious, impressionistic—like some kind of blue fog. Then the textures begin to arrive—the minimalist piano notes, the brittle crackle of percussion, the din of steely synths. They come at you in undulating waves, erupting in dramatic peaks or dissolving into soft crescendos that slip away into the night.
His debut, Succumb 2, is relentlessly melancholy, exuding a mix of longing and romantic yearning. “I mainly stick to unrequited love songs and try not to be too cryptic about it,” Anderson told us in a recent post, and you can feel that sense of wistful isolation carrying through in his tender vocals. It’s a beautiful record, but also an icy one.
For our first-ever INPUT/OUTPUT, we asked Anderson to give us a tiny bit of insight into each track off his new album. Not enough to strip them of their elusive mystery, of course, but enough to form a deeper appreciation for the varying sounds and inspirations that went into creating each piece of music. We then follow his words with our own ideas and interpretations, and, as a special bonus, included some original photography courtesy of Bryceson Center along with an advance stream of Succumb 2. You get the concept, right? Okay, let’s do this!
01. Limerence
Kakune: The primary motif of this song is about unrelenting desire and when those desires are not reciprocated. Almost like fantasized delusions of acceptance. I was also experimenting with the Kalimba and wanting to structure it into a song somehow. So I literally built the whole song around the Kalimba progression which is unorthodox to my writing method but overall a great experience.
Immersive: Let’s just get this out of the way. There is no denying the comparisons to Thom Yorke and James Blake. The similarities strike you immediately and they’re hard to shake. But once you get past that prejudice, you’ll encounter a song with a radiant ebb and flow. This is Kakune at his most lustrous, crafting a lush electronic soundscape that feels majestically urgent. “This could take all night / In the sea we bathe in the light” he sings with desperate hopefulness, offering a hint of catharsis that will go on to frame the rest of the album.
02. Fault Line
Kakune: This is a song I had been working with since the beginning of this project. Only a small stanza worth of lyrical content but I purposely wanted it to be short and direct. It briefly discusses a fear that I believe exists within all of us, which is being forgotten or irrelevant.
Immersive: Like Radiohead, Anderson understands that sad can still be funky. It’s the movement of this track that grabs you, that interplay between the drums and the menacing swell of the synths. Tonally, it maintains the forlorn atmosphere of its predecessor, but rather than sulk, you’re filled with the urge to dance. The changes might be subtle, but your body knows the difference.
03. (Ice) Chip on the Shoulder
Kakune: I wanted to work on a more up-tempo song for the album and thankfully messing around with beat machines can get you there relatively quick. I improvised some jagged words over the angular percussive parts and later came the melody. It wasn’t meant to be an aggressive song but more so an acknowledgement of some people who can’t seem to let go of their grievances or constantly treating others as inferior.
Immersive: No matter how distinctive your aesthetic, the danger of having a singular approach to music is that it can begin to sound repetitive. Broken into its constituent parts, this track has some interesting sonics and hypnotic textures, but put together it drags. Still, Anderson knows a good hook when he hears it, and that final refrain is almost enough to put this song over the top. This one has the potential to be a grower.
04. ½ the Battle
Kakune: This track I hold very dear to me and I’m very fond of it. It is a sentiment towards a feeling a past lover had been holding onto for quite some time. I honestly wrote it from her perspective and how I believe she perceived the duration of our relationship. How easy it is to become complacent in a linear bond with someone. I remember writing the chorus and thinking “Man… self-deprecation never sounded so catchy.” It’s humbling and rewarding to realize your mistakes sometimes.
Immersive: The most upbeat track so far and a nice departure from the downcast aura that has surrounded the record. There’s still plenty of tension and melodrama, but here there are sparks of color shooting through the gray clouds. The opening section with its skipping beat and warbled bass is downright playful. Even with all the heartbreak and regret lingering in the air, Anderson finds a way to stretch his bedroom electronica into something more grand and thrilling. If there is a pop hit lurking in any of these songs, this may be it.
05. Jaknyfe
Kakune: “Jaknyfe” is sort of a fictional narrative about a relationship that closely resembles a slo-mo car wreck (figuratively). It had been bouncing around in my head for a couple of months. The actual instrumentation and structuring of the song was the result of a frantic all-nighter after watching Michael Haneke’s psychological thriller Funny Games. I remember it made me feel very anxious and unhinged but it brought out so many great ideas. I really wanted the instrumentation to match the uncomfortable and troubled subject matter. The feeling of not being able to protect someone you love.
Immersive: We covered this one extensively in our premiere.
06. Slow Release
Kakune: Legitimately the first song I wrote for this project and still love coming back to it. The song conceptually is kind of unique, in that I had no preconceived words when I went to record the vocals. It started out as unintelligible syllables that had formed words on their own when I played them back and re-recorded them. I didn’t write it to follow a definite concept or narrative. It can be taken however the listener identifies with it. Honestly, I just wanted to write a sad piano ballad.
Immersive: Sadness oftentimes breeds distance and on the opening passages of this track Anderson sounds broken and alone. There’s a Yorke-like paranoia in his voice, and for the first time on Succumb 2 you can feel the crushing weight of all his anguish and unrequited love. But what starts as a sparsely populated dirge eventually transforms into something far more kinetic as the song erupts in a storm of clattering percussion and reverberating synths. His falsetto, all weary and windswept, is barely intelligible, but that doesn’t stop “Slow Release” from being any less gorgeous or moving.
07. This is the Last Day of Your Life
Kakune: I wrote this song loosely about a movie I had seen as a child called Defending Your Life, which is predominately a fantasy/drama feel-good flick with Albert Brooks as the protagonist. Basically he discovers that in the afterlife he must defend his actions on Earth in order to ascend to a higher plane of existence. While awaiting judgment, he meets the love interest and things get complicated. For such a fluffy film, it raised some really good questions and ideas in my adolescence. I thought it wouldn’t be a solid album if mortality hadn’t come up at least once.
Immersive: On his Facebook page, Kakune labels his sound as “Future Soul” and nowhere on the record does that descriptor make as much sense as it does here. Over a stark beat and an elegantly pulsing piano, Anderson lets loose one of his most expressive vocal performances on the record. His voice is too frozen and clean to be sultry, but there’s a midnight ambience that enshrouds this track, one that’s far too meditative to be seductive. “Slip down into the darkened water / It takes me into its open arms” Anderson croons, once again countering the album’s murky aura with allusions to baptismal rebirth.
08. Succumb 2
Kakune: For being the track baring the same name of the album; it was honestly a pretty daunting task to not make it feel underwhelming. Considering it doesn’t really have a formulaic structure or simply a cohesive feeling. I wanted it to be almost disorienting but beautiful at the same moment. The dissonant synth-like sound that opens up that track is a child’s musical toy I was messing with and recorded at a local thrift store. To which I later manipulated to sound even more discordant. When the strings start to embellish, I wanted it give a sense of tension and later a resolve with a warm analogue synth. Like giving in feels good.
Immersive: Anderson ends his debut with his most experimental composition. It’s a risky gambit that pays off by lifting the listener out of the pensive trance of the previous track and dropping them into an abstract soundscape that’s more peculiar and obscure than anything we’ve heard so far. If this song were placed anywhere else on the tracklist it would likely feel disjointed and out of place, but as the closer it offers a jarring bookend to the lush atmosphere that opens the album. For a record that delves deep into mortality and the vagaries of love, it’s fitting that you’re ultimately left with more questions than answers.
Succumb 2 is out tomorrow, July 8. Pre-orders are available via Bandcamp.
More Info
Bandcamp: kakune.bandcamp.com
Facebook: @kakunemusic
Instagram: @kakunemuziak
SoundCloud: @kakunemusic
Twitter: @kakunemuziak