“Looks to challenge conventions in more ways than one,” we wrote of the St. Kio sound back in May, describing how the LA-based multi-instrumentalist, artist and producer Nicole Bandoquillo uses the project to bend genre norms by “combining shoegaze, pop and post-punk sensibilities into something at once affirming and transportive.” This sense of invention and subversiveness is underpinned by real intention too. “Bandoquillo attempt[s] to break new ground as a way of carving out a space for those people too often marginalised within music scenes,” we continued, “be they of femme, BIPOC, and/or queer communities.”
Their debut EP Infinity Mirror, out now via Future Gods, introduces such ideals by conjuring a vivid environment of its own. The lead single and title track evokes “a world nocturnal and neon-lit,” as we put it, “balancing lush textures and soaring energy to create something both reflective and forward-facing.” A song which considers conditions not as some exercise in nostalgia or longing but motivation to press ahead to pastures new. The rest of the EP follows in this spirit, from the affirming soar of opener ‘Falling’ to ‘Softly’ and its hazy ebb and flow. The latter, written during a period of intense depression and suicidal ideation, finds a comforting vividness punctuated by towering crescendos, as though Bandoquillo is building a sound capable of consoling those in pain and lifting them from the depths of their feelings.
Closer ‘Fix Yourself’ is a striking follow-up and closer. A harsh, caustic track of barrelling momentum, forgoing some of the richness of the previous songs in favour of cathartic release. If its predecessors are about finding safe spaces for healing and progression, then ‘Fix Yourself’ is about the actual act of moving forward. Even if that means razing the things you have been attached to in the past. An act of defiant disowning of all the things which might have once dragged you down in order to live life anew.
Infinity Mirror is out now via Future Gods and available from the St. Kio Bandcamp page.
