>I slept really well last night. REALLY well. One of those deep sleeps where it feels like your body is slowly sinking, forever, into a pile of goose feathers and dreams are about marshmallows, bunny rabbits and cotton wool. Hence I woke feeling as relaxed as George Michael behind the wheel of his Range Rover.
I don’t know if my mind just took pity on me, or the deep slumber meant that it wasn’t awake quick enough to being inflicting annoyance on me again, but instead of having the usual dreadful novelty pop hit stuck on repeat in my brain, I awoke with Saint Etienne’s I Was Born On Christmas Day lodged defiantly between my ears.
This kind of good fortune only happens once in a while, so I greedily capitalised on it by watching the video over and over again on Youtube, just to cement it in place. It’s a lovely song, without irony or pretence, and is coyly romantic and twee, without plunging into cloyingness. Tim Burgess from The Charlatans is in it too, which just about knocks it into ‘perfect pop song’ territory.
Today’s New Band is a bit of a stark contrast to St. Etienne. Kaisonia, not to be confused with ANBAD alumni Kaiton, makes spacey, drifting music that, as a quick glance at their Myspace page might infer, is particularly intergalactic. If I was being glib (and I am) I’d say that Kaisonia is a bit like the Orb, but more… now.
In fact, if you are stuck in a slight sugar-rush pop buzz at the moment and need to shift your attention before you listen to the same song 15 times in a row (see footnote), Kaisonia might be your first port of call. Their music might well be the audio equivalent of a hot bath and a foot massage.
It’s difficult, and possibly pointless, when reviewing bands like this (see also: Boards of Canada and their ilk), to isolate individual track and comment on them. This sort of lilting, ethereal music doesn’t fit into, and isn’t restrained by, a traditional short-song format. It’s more satisfying to take the string of songs as a whole, and judge the experience as you go along. In this context, Kaisonia are fabulously weird, dream-like and rigidly loose, if you see what I mean.
You’d be daft (and infinitely less ‘chilled, maaaan’) if you didn’t dip your toe into Kaisonia‘s pool. So do so, here. Oh, and judging by their website, that pool might be a molten sulphur lake on Venus. Just so you know.
N.B. Prior to the writing of this post, Joe listened to I Was Born On Christmas Day 15 times in a row. Yikes.