New Pavilion Xool: “U U”

I’ve been feeling out of it for a while now. Initially, I thought it was because I caught a cold on a trip, and all that NyQuil is bound to shoot anyone into a haze. Yet it dawned on me this has been more like a month long malaise, one where I constantly find myself feeling somewhere between burnt out and really sleepy. I don’t think it’s depression — I’m genuinely upbeat — but rather some feeling of “enough for now” where I just refresh the same website over and over again all day.

I appreciate songs like “U U,” by rising producer Pavilion Xool, because it sounds like a brain melting into a puddle. The Tokyo-based electronic artist creates a sweltering number loaded up with distant jungle sounds, warped syllables and keyboard chirps. It brings to mind early career Seiho in how it feels off-kilter, but manages to coalesce into something solid…even when everything drops away a little after midway point and is replaced by more tropical caw-caws and fragile twinkling sounds. It sounds like a fever, and I’m all in on it. Listen above.