There’s a certain almost indescribable feeling that happens when you’re halfway between the sleeping and waking worlds. It’s the state of drowsiness in which you’re hovering just outside of your mind; a colored swirl of mindless delusions that hazily slip away and blend into one another before the wave of unconsciousness crashes down. Dream-like and surreal, it’s filled with warm and comforting chaos in which uncertainty lacks danger and movement lacks purposeful urgency. New Casino’s “Jupiter” is the musical equivalent of this unearthly state of being, providing a smooth and melodious trip through a hallucinatory world.
“Everything will change / everything will change / Camelot in the rain / you’ll see / rain falls on me”
The reverberating echo of deeply layered vocals is supported by the humming consistency of gentle drums and pops of synthesizer, fostering an overwhelming sense of illusion. There is a mystery shrouding the lyrics that serves to heighten the feeling of reality being removed and an overall altered state of existence. This eclectic blend creates a curious and almost New Order-like sound, testing the boundaries between awareness and the space between. It almost seems like what we are hearing is not really a story with a traditional beginning and end meant to provide the listener with a consistency and message. Rather, it feels like the unwinding of amorphous thoughts not meant to be puzzled out, instead used as a base for our own projections and interpretations.
“It’s all for me / it’s not me / it’s all for me / it’s not me / it’s all”
What starts as a coherent thought quickly begins to melt into itself and break away, creating a sense of shifting disconnect. Increasing of echoes here and the bleeding of lines together continues to drive the metamorphosis of the psychedelic sound, the murky back and forth merging in waves. It is how you would imagine the intangible and barely coherent thoughts of a mind altered to be, magnetic and intelligible in an untouchable kind of way. It feels as if you are searching for meaning in the unnatural; grasping at the fleeting threads of sense that understanding can be pulled from.
“Hey Elroy it’s a brand new day / forget about what those kids say / don’t worry it’s not about you / don’t believe it when they say it’s true”
With each repetition of this chorus, it’s as if the singer breaks from the hazy clouds of confusion to find moments of clarity before once again being pulled under. Clear and cognizant, it provides a stark contrast to the more cloudy ambiguousness of the verses. As the listener, you get the sense that the chorus is repeated as a mantra of sorts, meant to convince the singer that “what those kids say” is not really as true or relevant as it may seem. It is repeated in the hopes that he will not only begin to believe it himself, but that it will ultimately become a truth manifested through its sharing.
What “Jupiter” may lack in immediately discernible meaning is what allows it to simultaneously be so easily adapted to individual experience, creating a compelling opportunity for interpretation and reflection. Otherworldly and magnetic, New Casino has created a compelling journey through the strange and unnatural that is worth the taking.
