Taquwami is the type of artist who inspires people to invent genres just to place his music inside. I wrote that, alongside new gun LLLL, he was creating Ghibli-like blasts of sound, the sort of music blurring the line between reality and fantasy just right. His newest song, “Λlieɳs,” appears on a mix called “Dopewave Is Real,” which the people behind it say “is an experiment in genre creation,” the genre in question being “dopewave.” Regardless of where “dopewave” goes – to their credit, the “Dopewave” mix is pretty good, listen here!…it’s telling that Taquwami appears, because dude is doing something people want to categorize but isn’t such an easy task.
“Λlieɳs” makes me stick to my guns and say Taquwami’s on his Howl’s Moving Castle hustle here, the airy synths making me picture finely colored landscapes. The warped vocal sample is more of this world – mainly, inspired by Clams Casino – but still feels like a Taquwami trademark. The highlight of this track, though, comes in just after the two-minute-and-thirty-second mark, where the synths pickup and “Λlieɳs” goes skybound, transcendence dripping from each blurt. Again, I return to Ghibli because, in the same way one of their films manages to elevate magical fish and Totoros into really emotionally rich works, Taquwami takes bright otherworldly sounds and transformed them into these really poignant songs that feel alive. So while folks like me will keep trying to fence him into a genre, he’ll always be a step ahead. Listen below.