Happy Child, Carmen Jaci’s forthcoming album on Noumenal Loom, represents this aesthetic in its most realised form. An attempt to reconnect with the wonder and experimentation so often relegated to childhood, an unguarded style which embraces the performative and the playful to create something inherently personal, no matter how odd or eccentric the outcome. Packed with references to pop music, video games and symphonic works, and brought to life with mallet percussion and children’s toys, the resulting songs capture the curious vibe at the heart of all childlike curiosity—where the whimsical brightness is underlined by a certain disquiet. As though both magic and strangeness lie latent in all things.

Today we have the pleasure of sharing ‘I See’, the album’s latest single which serves as the ideal introduction for the uninitiated. It’s a track which exists across a series of layers, anchored by a syrupy beat but fizzing off with a variety of electronic details, Jaci’s lush vocals washing over with a style that challenges the distinction between sensuality and dreaming. The result is like exploring an idiosyncratic sonic ecosystem, the candy-coloured skitters and squelches and bright little pops filling the whole thing with a sense of childlike wonder. This might be Carmen Jaci’s personal language, but it is one delivered with intuition and curiosity, inviting outsiders into its world so we too might share its strange joys.

Artwork by Matthew Schoen, photo by Collectif Triangle

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