“The sound might not fully lose the ambiguity which marked leoblu, but here feels not so much ominous and nocturnal as organic, as though the arrangement is its own small biome teeming with mysterious life.” So we wrote of ‘Hair‘ by Snake Orange Cake back in July. We’d previously written how the new project of Åland-born, Berlin-based artist Julia Carlsson takes the “experimental electronic style” of Carlsson’s previous project and elevates it “with spoken-word poetry and extra narrative thrust,” and ‘Hair’ offered a tantilising glimpse of the possibilities of this new era.
Now Carlsson has returned with ‘Animals’, a new single to pull us further into the world of Snake Orange Cake. Embedded within a nocturnal, slightly unreal space, the track possesses an almost Suicide-esque atmosphere. One conjured through shimmering synths and layers of gauzy texture and featuring both spoken vocals and breathy yelps. The results dissolves any distinction between the organic and the digital, as well as the line between waking reality and dreams.
Because for all of the otherworldly strangeness of the soundscape and the transcendent mood it carries, you sense the effect is achieved not through pushing away from physical existence but rather towards it. Subverting the mundane experience of being alive by embracing the inherent strangeness within the natural world which surrounds us. A fitting impression to leave for a song inspired, as Carlsson reveals, by a “mystical connection with a wild iguana on a Costa Rican beach.”
Watch the video shot by Manuel Jesus in Berlin below:
‘Animals’ is out now and available from the Snake Orange Cake Bandcamp page.