The bedroom composer has always been one the most fascinating kinds of musician to me. These homespun works, tentatively composed with the sort of self-awareness that is seldom present in a full band offer an extensive insight into the mind of the artist that’s scarcely disclosed by their stage-populating contemporaries. From the lo-fi introversions of Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), to the psychedelic instability of Kevin Barnes (of Montreal) and the alt-hip-hop neurosis of Yoni Wolf (Why?), bedroom music is a uniquely placed sub-genre that’s more closely aligned to diary entries or misguided drunk texts than it has ever been to radio-ready pop releases.
Pikachunes‘ clever lyricism and fiery electro pop meets disco aesthetic marks the young man as one of the most dynamic bedroom pokemon producers on the scene.
Miles G. Loveless (almost his real name) lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, and makes noise under the moniker Pikachunes, which is, by every definition of the nonexistent phrase, a bedroom project. A fiery collision of electro-clash and disco aesthetics, counter balanced by Mile’s witty lyrics and accent-ambiguous vocals, Pikachunes is a project that manages to be both completely straightforward and wholly enigmatic at the same time. Now, five years on from his self-titled debut record, which you should absolutely listen to here, Miles Loveless is ramping up for his second full-length, entitled Allely.
The first single taken from Allely, Writer’s Block is a thrashing piece of homemade electro pop wrapped around a bittersweet love song that’s as lyrically deft as it is unique. Pikachunes’ flair for writing energetic and catchy instrumentals has only intensified in the intervening years since his last release; a rhythmic recipe comprising square bass lines, twitching synthwork, plucky lead guitar and choral vocals driven by a pulsating disco drum machine provides the perfect backing for Miles’ sharp lyrics.
“We can’t be in love if you can’t put it into words”, sings Pikachunes in Writer’s Block, a track lyrically dense enough to warrant it’s own paragraph. Packed with clever lines like “Write me a letter/ feature every letter/ no grammatical errors/ spellcheck from the header”, Miles makes very specific demands of his admirer in her pursuit of his love. Those demands could be summarized thusly: don’t be lax with your syntax, be a lexical excellence perfectionist and take a grammatical sabbatical if necessary, or don’t bother pursuing me at all. This is a big call, but I think Writer’s Block could prove to be the definitive Grammar Nazi love song from New Zealand in 2015, but I guess we’ll have to wait till the end of the year to find out.
Seriously though, Pikachunes’ exceptional songwriting ability is at its peak on Writer’s Block, combining witty lyricism and hurtling electro pop with the sort of compositional confidence that makes Miles the intriguing musician that he is. A bedroom project that sounds much larger than the setting it was composed in, Allely has fast become one of the more anticipated independent releases I’m looking forward to this year, and I look forward to further engaging in Miles G Loveless’ perplexing music and gaze into his equally perplexing mind.
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