Genre-Bending Kajo Releases Debut Album, Cold Places
Kajo is a genre-bending artist, songwriter, and producer that after heading on tour with Logic, signed to his Bobby Boy Records. After spending years fine-tuning his craft, “he has a special knack for making familiar strains feel otherworldly — using soft synth, sharp percussion, and syrupy vocals as the fuel for journeys to distant musical planets”. His songs defy the comfortable and pushes his audience towards a completely different world.
This week we got to sit down with Kajo ahead of the release of his debut album, Cold Places, and chat.
Our conversation with Kajo felt more like a therapy session than an interview, offering both insight on his upcoming projects and on the existential crisis of being human. He says that Cold Places is “about death” and “the weight of dispensed animation”, and the album takes us on a boundary-pushing journey through hip-hop rhythms and melodramatic percussions.
The 54 minute, 18-track album is an ode to the nostalgia of adolescence and the chaos of it all, describing it as a “playlist to [his] younger self”. As someone who has always been fascinated with the experience of death and what lays behind the veil of mortality, this album is a beautiful exploration of the impermanence of the human experience.
Cold Brew, one of our favourite songs on the album, feels like the type of song you listen to at 3am after coming home from a party you didn’t really wanna go to. His syrupy vocals paired with chillwave beats and lulling melodies crafts a beautiful story about young love.
My Father’s Garage, another track on Cold Places that features Rebelle Perle, female rapper and self-described rule breaker, is a look into his past. Growing up in a high crime area, he says that after school and on weekends him and his friends would sit in his father’s garage and listen to old records. He describes it as a “way to keep us safe, but really there was a desire to see the world and experience things" which he was able to do through his pursuit of music.
As we watch the music video for Ötzi, ahead of its release, he shares his favourite lyric from the song, “This is what makes us human, it’s to be special in somebody’s eyes”. The music video again takes us on an unworldly experience, and is inspired by the story of Ötzi, also referred to as the Iceman, who is believed to have been murdered by an arrowhead in the back. We asked him about how important it was for him to have full creative control in producing his music videos, since he places such a large emphasis on the visual side of his work. He says that for right now it’s extremely important and also as an emerging artist, helps keep costs down while still expressing his creativity.
After listening to the album you can’t help but take a minute to decompress, to sit with this feeling of chaos that the tracklist provokes deep in your soul. It’s a soulful experience of self-soothing and learning to let go of the past. In A Week, a single off the album, tells the story about the “disappointment in the way a relationship unfolds” and “is about recognizing that an individual you regard in a certain way is not responsible for the image and memory you maintain of them.”. Kajo has a beautiful way of storytelling through a fresh lens that breaks away from the comfortability of familiarity. When asked about his vision for his music moving forward he does say that he has projects that will hone in on more specific genres, but for now he’s continuing to explore and master his craft.
You can follow his journey on Instagram and Twitter, and check out his Youtube. Stream Cold Places on all available platforms.