Kohinoorgasm’s latest single “Closer” joins her body of experimental lo-fi pop music. The track repeats the phrase “Everytime I get closer, you hold me too tight.” In the face of such a scarcity of words, she diversifies her execution of every vowel and consonant. Angelically elongating her vowels, she puts the listener into a trance. The song compresses a singular feeling: an amalgamation of yearning, relinquishment, femininity and exhausted beauty. This is an atmosphere which imbues their discography.
Kohinoorgasm produces all of her own music. In “Closer” she hypnotizes us using lo-fi waves of synth as a pocket watch, with our ears in place of our eyes. Her pendulum of voice and sound swings us back and forth, left to right, round and round. It feels as if you are repeatedly getting closer and further – extending the lyric to the melody, and the melody to personal sentiment. What sentiments this may relate to in Kohinoorgasm’s world is, and most likely will remain a mystery to us. Nevertheless, the beauty of their work is in the accessibility of the theme. It demonstrates a universal relatability, offering a chance to plunge deep into one’s own individual experience.
Towards the end of the single, she repeats the words “closer” and “every time,” emulating the repeating rhythm of drawing near and retreating far. This cyclical experience feels beautiful and meaningful. Is this why we surrender to the gyre’s whirl? To feel significant? Ultimately, it is an inescapable cycle of the same affair. She leaves the listener with the light ticking of the hi-hat. As the music lightly taps away you may contemplate, where do I keep getting closer? What holds me too tight?
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Written by Pardis Eslamieh (@pigeonally)
Velvet Noise 