With only small handfuls of sounds and ideas, on ’Songs from a forgotten world’ Mikkerj conjures panoramic views (‘The flatlands’), microscopic cultures (‘Dvhyrdian moisture farm’) and fantasy family feuds (‘The King..’; ‘..and his daughter’), culminating in an album of serene world building vignettes and strange fairground novelties. Clocking in at a bite-sized 22 minutes, ‘Songs from…’ is an incredibly accessible oddity, with Mikkerj’s songs reading as unpretentious, whilst being highly digestible and unfettered by overcomplication. Most importantly, Mikkerj’s approach to production and songcraft on this album leaves plenty of room for the listener to project themselves into these small worlds- these little ‘canvases’, he calls them.
Mikkerj is a creator who has done a fair bit of hopping around when it comes to net-genres, from what I can tell from what is publicly accessible on their Spotify. They are responsible for internet hardcore ear bleeders like ‘Arsenic’ with its shotgun kick drums and file-corrupted footwork rhythms; through 2020 and into 2021 Mikkerj was producing dreamy, lo-fi hip hop with synth-wave elements. Though ‘Songs from…’ is similarly lo-fi and at points ‘dreamy’ sounding, it does not really pull from that previous era in any obvious way. By their own admission, Mikkerj makes music ‘on the extremes’. ‘Songs from…’ is not ‘extreme’ in a musical sense, but it is a very stark lateral move from one bedroom genre to another; from frantic hyper focus music to mind expanding meditation music. For me this doesn’t feel like it’s for the sake of optics. It isn’t about being seen as an artist who can do it all or who radically changes styles all the time because that’s their ‘thing’. Rather, Mikkerj feels like an artist that fully invests in whatever art they happen to be doing at the time.
With this album, Mikkerj has created something with the clear intention of something more conceptual and free and as a listener I think there’s a lot of cool stuff to be found in it.
The album opener ‘Lost Kingdom’ hits like a 16-bit RPG home screen looping, as whilst rain softly scatters on your windows. It’s a decidedly minimalistic track in terms of composition and production: a simple foreboding chord loop grounds a spritely lead melody, taking up the track’s centre. The effect is quite charming and exemplifies Mikkerj’s competence with the fundamentals of song writing. The field-recording used on this track elevates it a surprising amount, broadening the soundscape from a bit-crushed soloist performance into a midnight walk in the rain with musical accompaniment. The listener is placed in amongst a rhythmic passing of cars, irregular drops of rain and unintelligible telephonic voices, all of which have been chopped into having a pleasing musicality. A great opener, though I wished it was a touch longer.
‘Flatlands’ is a standout track. I’m not really sure what I feel whilst listening to it. It feels alien. The opening section is incredibly earwormy. A cavalcade of sounds- bells, whining strings, sliding synths- come in and out of view. These sounds are all pinned down by a high reaching synth which falls downward, flickering as it scans the horizon it reveals. The track then quietens down to something more reflective, slowing further and further. It is calming but also unnerving. This unnerving tension is raised further by the following track, ‘The carousel of time’, which I do genuinely find a bit scary- NOT A BED TIME TRACK. But I’m not sure if the album’s linearity is something to be considered too much. This seems like an interesting project to shuffle, as new combinations of vignettes might highlight different aspects of one-another. I do think there is a creeping horror that runs throughout the album though, regardless of track order. The low rumbling in ‘A light in the depths’ for example, sounds like a leviathan slithering along the depths of a twilight zone trench- it quite nauseating.
Light garden is an adorable little track though. I love its heavenly delay-heavy pianos. They are awash in the same peace and serenity which pervades a leisurely Wii Sports Resort play through. Followed by ‘Stardrops’, this is short and sweet stretch of the album. Unfortunately, this is followed by ‘Gone in an instant’, which didn’t do much for me. Though written and performed in a similarly minimalistic way to ‘Lost Kingdom’, it lacks the melody and field recording to keep the track engaging. There is nothing to distract or elevate the stilted Midi sound being used as the main key sound, so it comes across a bit plain and texture-less compared to the rest of the album. ‘Uo’ does however come in and secure this part of the album as a beautiful one. With its shimmering metal sounds and transcendent transition half way through, which sounds like drops of celestial light hitting the galaxy (but like reversed), it is so gentle, soft and sincere- I want Mikkerj to soundtrack children’s story book audio tapes.
The album’s last three tracks make for a good closing leg to the project. ‘A place for the forgotten’ is adequately strange. Featuring a goblin forest creature singing its woes, to the sounds of reversed pianos, it feels melancholic and, yeah, weird. But it does in fact feel like a place for the forgotten, so mission accomplished. The timbre of the keys on ‘The day is done’ and its connective (and the album’s final) track, ‘Dawn of a new day’ don’t hit my ears super great; they’re slightly grating, but I do in fact love what they are playing. Melodically this is the strongest track on the album. It feels like a triumphant march, hand in little silly alien creature hand, into the slightly goofy sunset. It’s strangely moving.
I didn’t cover every track here, so there’s much more to explore with this project. Due to the brevity of the music and the album as a whole, relistens are expidited and rewarded. In a sentence, ‘Songs from…’ offers a refreshing array of soundtrack-y piano lead arrangements and morphing atmospheric passages. But even this betrays it. It’s quite difficult to surmise in a representative way (I found this review very difficult to do), but this is by design. Its wanderlust is a strength. However I think I would have liked to hear some tracks be developed a little more. Tracks like ‘Gone in an instant’ though having a clear emotional quality lack the production touches necessary to make the track breathe. Indeed, across the album, some of the instruments used could sound quite stilted and could have used a bit more of an analogue and homely feel to convey the materiality of these worlds, or add some performance flair.
This is an exciting album for me in what it says about Mikkerj as a creator. He feels liberated here and this album sounds like it was really fun to make for him. It’s lively and joyous, even if it sometimes sounds a little creepy- but that’s part of the joy of it, I think. This album indicates that Mikkerj has a lot of uniqueness to give and I’m interested to see where he goes from here.
FFO: Aphex Twin, Weird core, Orange Milk Records
Favourite Tracks: Forgotten Kingdom, Flatlands, Uo, Dvhydrian moisture farm, Light garden
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Support this release and the artist @:
LINKS: https://linktr.ee/Mikkerj
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/MikkerjMusic/videos?app=desktop
BANDCAMP: https://mikkerj.bandcamp.com
WEBSITE: https://www.forgottenworldarchive.org
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See Mikkerj’s work on therudderstream @:
Jack 08/07/23
THE RUDDER BLOG 