IT’S BEEN a proper learning curve: I mean, we’ve all had to find our own ways of dealing with … this, haven’t we? Whatever gets you through.
Personally I’ve got friends who’ve deep-dived into utter vinyl addiction; who’ve really got into 5k running, or taken up painting for the very first time; who’ve planted out their garden and brought a long-held velleity for self-sufficiency to literally bear fruit.
Tokyo-resident, Canadian beats-maker Demsky has been cool and considered enough to pull out the positives from 2020 so far. For him, it’s “… been a great time to slow down, reflect, create, and even fight for great things that are important in our lives.” A good approach; on that we can agree.
He’s been into sculpting ambient downbeat breaks for a decade or so, with his music-making shifting up through the gears in the last year-plus. He’s graced the stage at the Asagiri Jam and Tone River Jam festivals in his adopted homeland, Japan; the Žižkovská Noc urban festival in Prague; and the Come Together Music Festival back in Durham, Ontario.
And then? Well, 2020 happened to Demsky like it has to all of us. And he took the avenue of catharsis and creation and today is revealing the single “Cold Coffee”, a precursor to his Tell Me About The World EP, to come later in the year.
And it’s a lovely, quirky, open and loose six minutes of textured downbeats, is “Cold Coffee”. Demsky professes a love of artists like Lemon Jelly, and you can pick that up early in the track in that found-voice exchange: “Excuse me, I happened to be passing and I thought you might like some coffee” declares a cute voice, someplace, somewhere (and besides, round these parts declaring a dislike for Lemon Jelly is a bit like saying you don’t like ice cream; brows furrow, cups pause twixt sip and saucer).
The beats skitter, but are too elegant to break a sweat; the mid-ground textures and bells just yaw the tiniest bit into otherworldliness, giving a little Kieran Hebden/Boards of Canada-style blissful, eerie spaciousness; other little squeaks and pretty bursts fire off and play in the higher range. If I was to summarise and say it was playing out near anyone else’s neighbourhood connotatively speaking, I’d have to note Spanners-era The Black Dog.
It’s closely textured, really deep, decent-speaker listening that builds up through further captured chatter. “Ice-cold-cold-ice-cold … Tell me about the world?” pleads a male voice, which is as apt a question as anyone could’ve posed at any time since March. It’s all very, very pleasing indeed.
It’s the little things, Demsky confirms, when asked about the title-as-subject: “Cold Coffee”? Rilly?
“This track is just about that. We all have those moments where we immerse ourselves so deeply into something we love and are passionate about that we tend to forget about the things that surround us.
“In my case, it was my coffee,” he says.
Demsky’s is Tell Me About The World EP is mooted for a release before the end of the year. To keep abreast of developments and to hear more tunes as they drop, you can find him on SoundCloud, on Facebook, at Spotify, and over at his own website.
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