“Matryoshka” features the most jarring moment yet in Suiyoubi No Campanella’s career to date. It comes early, when a voice that isn’t KOM_I’s enters, stage right. It comes courtesy of Pablo Padovani of French group Moodoïd (and…I didn’t know this until the video dropped…was part of Melody’s Echo Chamber). But it could have been Hatsune Miku and I’d still be caught off guard…the world Suiyoubi No Campanella has created finds KOM_I playing the role of narrator, zipping and zooming around the landscape like a future bass version of Puck. “Matryoshka” lets someone else in, and it also explores space more than anything on last year’s triumphant Superman. The two share verses and come together over light percussion and some synth washes — this project has always treated voices like another instrument, but it might actually be more true here than ever before, unison singing stretched out and Padovani’s French sweet-nothings dripping like eye medication. And in one last twist, the final stretch features a heavy amount of backtracking, warping everything and turning the song into a head trip. It’s intriguing on its own but ultimately more appropriate in the context of their new EP, which (spoiler alert) finds Suiyoubi No Campanella exploring space more than they ever have before, revealing a whole new angle to their sound that’ just as exciting. Listen above.
