Krrum and his psychotic collages
By definition, a kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors that reflects, infinitely and in colour, the external light. By comparison, Krrum is a tube of sounds that reflects, in time and in genres, the external music. The parallelism could not be more striking. Unless his eyes resemble those of a fly, we’re talking about his music and not the man himself. To tell you the truth, we don’t have a clue, really. Perhaps his round spectacles hide a clairvoyant vision, an extraterrestrial one even. This would be the bare minimum required to build such a world, hybrid and mysterious, a tad destructive, where melancholy and gaiety easily compete against one another. When I ask Krrum the reasons behind this bipolarity, he states: “You never choose particular influences when writing because it’s hard to not try to reproduce what you’ve already heard. It can harm originality. I think it’s important to listen to a variety of genres and styles, as often as possible, and let your subconscious find inspiration in them. In that way, your tastes and personality may reveal themselves in your writing, whatever happens. Anyway, that’s what seems to work for us. That’s why I don’t often listen to electronic music when I’m producing because I find myself copying certain specific tricks.”
Krrum’s visual art jumps out at you, clings on to your retinas like a startling beam of light that then flashes in ghostly layers. This well-known visual phenomenon, that blurs your vision when you stare at a light bulb for too long (granted, without any valid reason), finds itself here positively activated by a multitude of stimulating details. His illuminatingly colourful collages, the overlaying of burning materials for the cover art of the « Hard On You » single, or even the blue laden images on the « Evil Twin » EP, denote a flamboyant and singular aesthetic, an aesthetic value of its author’s creative madness but also of his entourage: « We’ve got a true team behind the creation of the songs’ visuals. Matt de Jong on illustration, and Camille and Sara Summers-Valli on the videos. They listen to the songs and read the lyrics, that’s why it’s really their own vision of the music. I like how none of the images have any obvious link with the music. Their intentions are subtle and I think that enables the creation of a space for people to think up their own ideas, rather than being told the meaning via the illustrations. »
Challenge met. The intelligent enumeration of images, accompanied by the different musical genres (blues, hip-hop, electronic amongst others), enables the blurring of boundaries, all in a truly involuntary pedagogical style, as if we were taking part in a treasure hunt organised by people tripping on acid. His videos, produced by the same duo Summers-Valli, live on in these same hallucinations. We therefore turn towards this fancy bearded man, crowned with an exacerbated psychotic aura who possesses more doses than a tipsy night-bird. Doses all the more benign and exhilarating as they’re to be enjoyed without moderation.
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By author © Julien Catala
Follow new’s artist on his Facebook or Soundcloud.
