Memories and the mediums that we store them in can become boxes of poltergeists we use to afflict ourselves. When trauma smacks my heart and shoots blood laced with menacing memories into my brain, I pool all that blood into songs that latch onto the the mesh of my mind and intuitively interweave themselves out of sight.  Only music is the map to find them, without that song they’re just one nugget of a past forgotten. But that’s only in the wake of wandering danger that happens to me.

When I’m the perpetrator, when I’ve cut the wound that became critical: music can be a minefield.  Getting to the mind space to cover, “Videotapes”, required opening a flume of emotions that  Crystal Fighters ‘ “At Home” has the key for. But doing so, letting the tenderness rush in has all the instant risk of infusing yourself with Mendes’ film title or eyeing a line of “Molly” (you hope) your friend offers you on the back of a toilet seat at a club, it’s a real “Away We Go” situation. Better be worth it, this wild side tightrope ride balancing post-break up love nostalgia and using the emotions in the act of writing–or as “Videotapes” does, songwriting–as an act of healing. Music can make you hear voices, but only from the past. But with the uncontrollable nature of self-inflicted wounds–and love is so one of them–more than one song can be the conduit of your chaos. Love combustion can spark a litany of songs into shrapnel that can keep knocking that wound open. 

But this makes “Videotapes” sound much darker than it is. Actually, the value of East London based Kidd Feather’s track is that it recognizes there are times when you just need to let the videotapes go. It’s not quite there at  burning them in the bin yet, but it’s just about done papier mâché-ing the scar left by love’s punch to the chest with a coat of serenity. The chorus is the epitome of this, and it’s replete with some of the warmest synths that I’ve heard all year. It’s a bit of like the seas of Florida rushed into a Canadian lake, a rush of comfort that’s pretty impossible not to get lost in.

Which is good, because as I’ve heard, that’s indicative of the rest of Kidd Feather’s work. If you want to hear more, you can buy his debut single, Sirene on Itunes, check out his website, follow him on Soundcloud and Facebook. A video for ‘Videotapes’ will be filmed this summer, and we’ll for sure be covering it.

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