No sweat off Kan Wakan’s Back with new release.
No sweat off my back delivers on the Kan Wakan promise of meditative, introspective downtempo music that he so lovingly crafts every time. Everything about this new single feels carefully and exactly laid out, and it’s sort of what I’ve come to expect of Gueorgui Linev’s project. His sound is deliberate and precise, and although not quite a minimalist, he knows how to create moods and set tones in the simplest musical terms possible, wasting not a single note and keeping things neat, elegant and effortless.
For this fresh new release, Linev chose to work once again with Tien Nguyen, better known as SAIGO, recruiting his fantastic and ethereal R&B-infused vocals to bring the lyrics to life.”No Sweat is a meditation, an acceptance,” says Kan Wakan, finalizing: “a lament of weary anxiety. Who decides where this school of fish is swimming, and aren’t we exhausted from trying to swim there?”
If you’re familiar with Kan Wakan, you should know by now that pure electronica would be too narrow and too constricting for him. The multi-instrumentalist always makes good use of analog elements seamlessly women into the digital fabric at the core of his work and in this particular instance, the oh-so-delicate string plucks he provides blend together with SAIGO’s spotless vocals giving the entire song subdued, downtempo R&B and even funk undertones, kind of like a very faint sassy smirk to accentuate the mood. It’s in this curious dance between the ethereal aspects of his electronic composition and the more earthy, grounded tones of the traditional instruments where I think you will often find the Kan Wakan sound shining the brightest.
“No Sweat” marks the third release heralding the upcoming “Phantasmagoria Vol.2” set to release later this year. The album will be a continuation of Linev’s ghostly and dream-like narrative that touched on memories, loss, and complex emotions. Originally planned as a triple-LP release, Kan Wakan reworked the songs into more distinct albums with their own self.-contained narratives, but ultimately tied together by overarching themes.