Each monitor on urika’s bed room’s debut appears as if it’s nonetheless within the means of rendering. Digital static whirrs and purrs like fireflies glowing within the distance. Drums loop in warped grooves, revealing the collapsed textures between their slowed-down beats. “I think about what Nirvana would have seemed like if Kurt Cobain had a MacBook Professional,” the artist mentioned of his music in a latest interview. The hum of a laptop computer lingers beneath his delicate, jangly songs, however urika’s bed room doesn’t fixate an excessive amount of on digital particulars. His music is wide-eyed and intimate, repurposing the tonal cloth of communication breakdown till it’s as cosy as a quilt on a chilly evening.
Whereas not a lot is understood in regards to the L.A.-based songwriter (actual title Tchad Cousins), urika’s bed room has emerged amid a crop of equally dreamy new songwriters. He’s toured with Chanel Beads, Nourished by Time, and Youth Lagoon, in between producing and writing songs for fellow California up-and-comers untitled (halo) and Ded Hyatt. Like these artists, urika’s bed room takes a dissociated, post-club method to indie, folding in blurry fragments of hip-hop and digital music, and yielding the sort of acoustic guitar jams that solely come pouring out after a 5 a.m. molly comedown. His Auto-Tune croon hits like Alex G earlier than he’s had his espresso, capturing the identical internet-afflicted innocence of his misty movie scores for Jane Schoenbrun.
On Massive Smile, Black Mire, Cousins makes an attempt to make synthetic coldness as brilliant because the solar. Journey-hop beats heave in opposition to tenderly stroked acoustic guitars, whereas patchwork electronics enhance confessional, slurring vocals. “Video Music” and “Junkie” present him at his strongest: The previous chops up its glowing guitar harmonics with breakbeats and CDJ results that crest alongside Cousins’ breathy, childlike vocals. The latter coats its downtuned strum and turntable scratches in coarse, mulching distortion, like a extra studio-polished Organ Tapes, or maybe Yves Tumor in the event that they leaned all the way in which into the hints of emo on Secure within the Arms of Love.
Although urika’s bed room reaches for large feelings, whether or not he truly will get there’s one other story. For probably the most half, Massive Smile, Black Mire reveals all its methods inside the first few tracks. The palm-muted slowcore guitars of “Exit” is likely to be produced with simply the correct quantity of pluck, however by the album’s midway level, it turns into more durable to disregard how rinse-and-repeat each successive tune is. “Metalhead” retains stopping and beginning, as if suggesting a brand new path, earlier than finally deciding on extra of the identical. By the point you get to the Modest-Mouse-by-way-of-Orchid-Tapes chug of “Century Love,” Cousins’ sincerity begins to really feel a bit an excessive amount of like a posture.