With new single ‘never see’, otta is focusing the lens on you – it feels oppressive doesn’t it?
Yet as everything passes by us in the hyper-modern nature of modern existence, it feels comfortable to crawl within ourselves, while everything we need to find a sense of clarity is right on our front doorstep. With ‘Never See’, it feels like otta is pulling back the drapes, encouraging you to WAKE UP with a bit of tough love.
The track gyrates around otta’s crystalline voice, oscillating with industrial force and playfully jostling as the pin-sharp clarity of the vocal mutates and strangles itself to illicit some sort of feeling. It’s all pushed intensely high in the mix, but that only make for a more pleasing juxtaposition to the plainspoken, almost gentle melody emanating from otta’s mouth.
It’s the clearest indication so far of otta subverting the idea of what’s accessible – the track teasing you with an absorbing, hypnotic trap beat before being clipped at its wings or summoning a calming, pacifying vocal line before you are sucked in with a repetitive slap of a chorus. It’s all channelled into a sweaty, claustrophobic production that’s eviscerated before you can ask “what?”.
Brace yourself, otta’s going to mess with you without you realising.
Header Photo by Carolina Mills
The new issue of So Young is out now. It’s SOLD OUT in print but you can read the digital edition below.