REVIEW: Inside Maybe Blue’s Intramotion
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY KATIE SLATER ☆
INTRAMOTION IS THE BRILLIANT DEBUT ALBUM—of Vietnamese-American electronic artist maybe blue. Straddling the spaces between cyber pop, hyper pop and at times even lo-fi R&B, the 12 track collection has the undeniable air of belonging to someone who has spent years crafting their sound. Still a relatively underground artist, intramotion’s extensive lyricism, combined with glitch-forward sounds, certainly has the quality to propel the project into the center of the scene.
On my first listen through the album, I was struck by the depth of its concepts. While scanning through the track list, I found that the artist includes a range of cultural references, tying the project into the digital world and beyond.
Track four, “kintsugi,” is named after an ancient Japanese art form. Broken ceramics are fixed with powdered gold or silver, celebrating and displaying the repairing process rather than obscuring it. By filling the song with lyrics of self-improvement after losing your way in life, maybe blue’s use of metaphor deepens the often light-hearted approach of the genre.
The album touches on an array of themes, from the fears of falling in love to the intimidating force of passing time. It is generally underpinned by the thin line between connection and isolation, an increasing worry of contemporary society in the age of social media.
maybe blue immediately introduces this tension in the opening track “stellar.” There is a sense of suffocation with lines such as ‘‘keep track of my whereabouts and double click the pages / I’m a sucker sharing, now they track what I’m wearing.’’ Despite the fact that his every move is being monitored, the singer seemingly has no emotional connection to these spectators, actively avoiding any kind of meaningful conversation labelling them “interrogative.” As a take on the belief that crowded rooms can be the loneliest of places, this track describes the isolating effects a lack of real-life human connection can cause.
Musically, the songs are excitingly diverse. Moving from beat-driven sampling and glitch-style vocals, to the nostalgic Y2K sounds of lo-fi inspired jazz textures, it glides expertly from high-energy dance music to softer introspection.
I particularly enjoyed “only 1 I trust” and “softly” for their use of warm sounding extended chords, which add a cushioning layer to the glitchier vocals. With an incredibly subtle swing, the sparse drum pattern lets the harmony lead, allowing the more emotionally vulnerable ‘softly’ to drift forward. Syncopated fretted basslines also add a super cool feel, breaking up the lyric patterns in their fill-like structures.
An early track ”give it right” is equally as sonically interesting, playing with contrasting beats to illustrate the story of the song—the fear of falling head over heels for someone. While some moments are driven by a highly regular eighth note pulse, this can be almost immediately followed by dubby bass or sampled beats. The effect is a series of obvious switches in pace, representing the dual feelings of uncertainty and excitement that come with falling for someone new.
A rare album that is equally as fun to listen to as it is culturally relevant, intramotion is an incredibly strong debut for maybe blue. Universally appealing in its echoes of Y2K nostalgia, fused with all kinds of complementary genres, I urge you to join the fan club before maybe blue’s likely rise to stardom.
