Ari Solus – Caveman EP
One of the beautiful things about the internet is how it can influence and essentially create multiple little genres of music. The past few years have seen such breathtakingly unconventional microgenres blow-up overnight, then become dated within a manner of months after a new genre comes along to take its place. Such online oddities such as witch house, chillwave, seapunk and vaporwave have all done the Hype Machine rounds in the past few years. Little is known about Ari Solus, other than a scant Tumblr account and some Youtube videos. While not exactly an enigma, his debut EP Caveman has been causing quite a stir in some circles on the internet.
Caveman is a surrealist excursion into seemingly every online-based genre of the past five years, while simultaneously sounding like something you’ve never heard in your life. You can hear echoes of trap rap, the acoustic fingerpicking of folk rock, and enough Auto-Tune to make T-Pain green with envy. Caveman is one of the most abstract, anti-genre EP’s I’ve ever listened to before. I’d hesitate to even call it an EP in retrospect, the structuring seems more indicative of a slapdash mixtape you’d find uploaded in the dark recesses of DatPiff. If it weren’t for the small transitions inbetween “Klonopin” and “Marissa Part 2”, you’d have The production is incredibly lo-fi, but on that note it displays some oddities that give it away as a product of the internet age. Musically, Solus can’t seem to decide whether he wants to be Justin Vernon or Chief Keef, he swings back and forth between introspective folk tunes and Auto-Tuned R&B with the skill of a pro.
Solus has a tendency to warp and distort his voice beyond the point of recognition, overdosing on Auto-Tune and placing enough reverb on his vocals to make Andrew Eldritch cringe. Solus swings back and forth between a comically gothic sounding baritone (as on the album standout “Marissa”), or a Bon Iver-esque falsetto. Solus’s experimentations with Auto-Tune brings to mind fellow internet trendsetter Yung Lean, or even a more subdued 808s & Heartbreak-era Kanye West. “Ovo I Ride Freestyle” sounds like it could’ve come off one of Lean’s very own mixtapes. The sound clipping on “Immolation” somehow adds a more human feeling, to what is otherwise run-of-the-mill indie folk tune. Caveman is definitely a very low budget affair, and contains enough sampled drums and dollar-store microphones to make you question why you’re even listening in the first place.
The majority of the songs on here barely even resemble fully fleshed out ideas, some of them barely last beyond the 60 second mark, and most of them (“The Grey Days Are Just Beginning” and “Ovo I Ride Freestyle” in particular) tend to cut out before they’re even finished. “Marissa” is one of the most surprisingly beautiful songs on the album, with Solus’s gentle fingerpicking and soft percussion perfectly suiting the songs distant and isolated feeling. It sounds unfinished in parts, but at the same time you get the feeling that adding anything else to it would simply be overkill. “Post Game Update” even features a sampled loop from Drake’s Grammy-nominated single “0 To 100/The Catch Up”, as if Solus isn’t afraid of comparing himself to someone as famous as Drizzy himself. If most other people did this, it’d just sound egotistical and silly, but in the context of the EP it’s cute and endearing.
As much as Caveman defies categorisation and genre pigeonholing, you get the feeling that a genuinely decent amount of work was put into it. The trap songs are stupid, let it never be said, but others such as the highly danceable remix of “Grey Days” or the Weeknd-esque slow jam “Klonopin” work brilliantly sandwiched between the more indie-friendly tunes. Ari Solus’s penchant for minimal production combined with his music’s sense of mystery recalls the reclusive artist Jai Paul, while his love of experimentalism brings to mind Dean Blunt’s more recent work. Solus has crafted a set of tunes that, while indeed amateurish rough around the edges, show significant promise and display a definite love of moody R&B and sombre indie folk. Here’s hoping Solus can go on to outgrow his Soundcloud roots and become a full-fledged professional musician with ease.
7/10
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