plant food is the recording project of Maxim S. from Finland, and koalas hug trees to keep cool is his new album on Fox Food Records. Recorded in a two year period between Turku, Helsinki, Moscow and St Petersburg, the album is an intimate yet ambitious blend of bedroom pop and ambient, following the likes of The Washboard Abs in challenging the boundaries of the bedroom aesthetic and pushing the limits into a wider expanse.
‘falling asleep to spoken word’ kicks off the release, a typically morose and sincere lo-fi folk sound, somewhere between dissatisfied and disinterested, that somehow conveys the opposite emotion. However, ‘found your old casio in the attic’ follows with a taste of the other string in the plant food bow, comprising of nothing but an ambient drone and soft sound recordings. Amongst birdsong and tape crackle sounds the only voice in the track, though it’s too distant for any words to be revealed. ‘baked beans’ follows with something of an amalgamation between the two styles. Here the simple bedroom pop strum is dragged off kilter by various effects and recordings, and again the natural world seeps into the space, knitting into the fabric of the track.
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The short, striking simplicity of ‘playing hooky’ is followed by the ethereal ‘you in front of the chapel,’ where again the sounds of nature leak between the notes. The stark patience is only increased on ‘mkat’s kicking in/slacking off in your basement’, sounding like an abandoned country house haunted by a folk song as the rain drums on the porch, before ‘powder worries’ picks up the tempo with a nostalgic beat. It is appropriate that ‘such a beautiful thing’ closes the release, just over sixty seconds of something that feels equal parts dreamy and focused, at once mournful and imbued with gentle sense of hope.
koalas hug trees to keep cool is out now via Fox Food Records and you can get it from Bandcamp, including a nice cassette edition.
