Michael Kentoff makes a name for himself with his enchantingly eccentric new self-titled solo album — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
For Kentoff, singer-songwriter of the experimental pop group The Caribbean, songwriting is problem solving. When Kentoff became fascinated with the electronic dance genre footwork, he wondered if he could apply indie-pop songcraft to its cut-up production style.
The D.C. artist soon found exploring this creative conundrum to be the perfect antidote for dealing with the postpartum depression he was experiencing in the wake of The Caribbean’s latest album. The results can be heard on Kentoff’s self-titled solo debut, a surprisingly satisfying amalgamation of adventurous soundscapes and well-crafted melodies.
“I love how jarring J. Dilla and DJ Rashid and a lot of Chicago footwork sound. I started to think if I can build songs out of guitar and piano, why can’t I do this with samples? I ended up putting two kinds of music I’ve never heard together, pop and footwork,” Kentoff says.
The experiment began when Kentoff loaded Ableton onto his work computer, and began sampling, cutting, and looping. He started to create weird, refractive pop songs that somehow melded easily with his exquisite melodic sense, his plaintive vocals, and his abstract lyrics. Kentoff comments: “Even though I was an English major, I don’t care about words — melody is paramount — but the lyrics have to sound cool. Phonetics matter a lot to me.”
Michael Kentoff opens with the dreamy Ima Try, a bouquet of looped melodic motifs and scattered lyrics with references to Lenny Bruce and Chick Corea and Gary Burton’s 1973 ECM album Crystal Silence. Infirmary Guests Please Sign In is a ball of glitchy beats, smooth atmospherics, and surreal word flow with passages such as: “He worked Operation Igloo White in Khe Sanh Yankee-Delta 0-1-5 / 5-7-5 Infirmary guests, please sign in.” Everything’s R+D is the album’s most intrepid piece, a sprawl of densely layered footwork pop.
The Slight Brigade flirts with lysergic indie folk-pop and puts forth an anti-authority stance as only Kentoff can muster. “I’ve always had this weird relationship with authority figures like the police, bosses, and my parents. I want them to like me, but I also want to be autonomous and do my thing,” he explains. “I think it comes out in my singing. I sound apologetic when I sing, like I’m still trying to explain to my (now dead) parents why I am doing music.” The nine-song album concludes with Bcuz U Asked, a dazed reverie of taut beats, rich gurgling low end, swaths of synth textures, and a handful of strange samples strewn throughout in a way that holds together as a beautiful mess.
Though it’s a solo album, Kentoff’s new record is a family affair. Joining him on it are many associates of The Caribbean, including the band’s guitarist and synthesizer player Dave Jones; Kentoff’s wife Maureen Kentoff, a gifted vocalist; longtime mix engineer Chad Clark (Beauty Pill); and engineer Heba Kadry (Björk, Beach House, Slowdive, Mars Volta), who also mastered the release.
Check out Michael Kentoff (the album) below and follow Michael Kentoff (the human) on Facebook.
