Description
2LP is Gatefold Jacket, Custom Inner Sleeves + Download Card.
CD is Jewel Case.
In a world where art is compromised and commodified, shrunk down andboxed in, Vicktor Taiw wants us to open up. The vibrant young singer-songwritertraffics in subtle hints and soaring melodies, slow creeps and grandclimaxes. Taiw is on a mission to collect something from himself, and its ajourney worth following.
It is the frigid winter of the year 2000 and Vicktor Taiw, an eight year old,accompanied by his mother and siblings, arrive in East London after leavingbehind the visceral warmth of Abeokuta, Nigeria behind. Raised in a Christianhome, his exposure to performing music came as it does for many with giftedvocal ability; honing skills and crafting harmonies in church choirs.
Years forward and disillusioned by his decision to study Law & Business at university, Vicktor Taiw makes a choice that alters the course of his life permanently. After encouragement from friends and a brief stint as a frustrated photographer, Taiw decides on January 1, 2012 precisely – as he does with most things – that he would make music his medium.
Once he started uploading his songs online, listeners caught on quickly. Without label or publisher, he found himself synced on shows like Girls and Dear White People. JUNO, Vicktors self-released debut EP, was met with praise by the likes of Vice, Billboard, and Okayplayer for its lean, focused approach to song structure, and for its withering, poetic lyrics.
Even at such an early stage in his development, Taiw was finding angles that most songwriters would neglect. At this point, all I really think there is for humans to do is to explore detail, he says. To see how infinite an infinitely expanding universe really is, and how small the smallest particle really is.
His debut album, Joy Comes in Spirit, is at once experimental and comforting collected shards of soul and style reassembled into something entirely new. Due out on Innovative Leisure, the record introduces a bold new artist willing to take musical and lyrical risks, and to bare himself to an international audience. The result is an arresting, unforgettable work that shrugs off the expectations we have that musicians fit easily into recognizable molds.
A fearless writer, on Letters I Wrote, Taiw opens with a remarkable scene: If you never see sunlight again / And the sun turns black and makes you so afraid / Can you find the light within to fight the night? Its a note to self of course; from Joy Comes in Spirits first note, Vicktor is mining his own psyche for its dark depths and hidden crevices, demanding from himself the sort of emotional reaction his work incites in others.
Songs like Subducta. Psalm 69, a seven-minute, multi-part epic, echo contemporary hip-hop; tDS (Surf) seems designed to be sung around campfires in the distant future; Supernatural Women traces 808s & Heartbreak back to its Zappian roots. And Summon, one of the records highlights, is like if you trapped a troubled spirit in a GameBoy Colour.
Vicktor Taiw is emotionally complex. His albums beautiful closer, Morning Joy, is redemptive, an optimistic look toward better days. Its hard not to be optimistic in the face of Taiws talent, the kind of which is rarely harnessed so seamlessly, and at such a young age. Hell be an artist of consequence for years to come, no matter what outside forces threaten to block his path.
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