Released via Foreign Family Collective/Counter Records, Kasbo’s debut album Places We Don’t Know is a sonic bildungsroman.

“Conceptually the album is about romanticizing a naïve worldview,” the Swedish producer said of the LP. “That [naiveté] and ignorance is something to be cherished. There’s something really beautiful about the perfect worldview you have as a kid, that the world is harmless, beautiful, and good. The more you learn and experience though, the more you realize everything isn’t perfect. So the less you know, the more beautiful it is, it’s the things we haven’t done, the places we don’t know, that have this unquestionable beauty. It’s this world I’m trying to mirror with my album, the one that stays in your imagination.”

Kasbo’s aspiration to first capture, and then encapsulate a whimsical, puerile innocence of mind and disposition via sound is conceptually regressive in its harkening back to a simpler perspective, untainted by worldly awareness. The wide-eyed, evergreen youth of Places We Don’t Know blinks back at listeners through “Stay With Me” and “Bleed It Out.” “They talk, but I keep dreamin’/And I don’t get what to resist,” vocalist Nea sings on “Bleed It Out.”

Places We Don’t Know denotes duly a clear vision of construction, and an irony: the debut album that embraces the innocuous bliss of the unknown and the inexperienced, is itself emblematic of Kasbo’s own progression. The nostalgic release seeks repose in a state of childlike naiveté while surging forth as an emblem of Kasbo’s growth and experiences. In the trajectory classic of a bildungsroman, Kasbo comes of age as an artist through the release of Places We Don’t Know. 

“Musically I knew I wanted to do a sonic representation of the concept, blending worldly sounds with small bedroom type samples and soundscapes,” Kasbo stated of the album’s constructional basis. “I really loved the idea of those two polarizing things being the two main factors that would lay the ground for the album.”

Kasbo’s predilection for lush soundscapes that mellifluously and unhurriedly develop in tandem with a serene vocal part figures in “About You” and “Bara Du,” among other track listings.

Places We Don’t Know gained momentum through the release of the album’s first single, the Tender assisted “Aldrig Mer.” Future bass found its own place on the tracklist via the second single,  “Your Tempo.” “Find” and “Over You,” the final singles that offered a sample of the sound of Places We Don’t Know prompted the it  to gain further traction prior to its March 23 arrival.

A release unfettered by the consciousness that comes with age, Places We Don’t Know is a heart-strirring, vernal gaze backwards in time.

Tags: Album Review, Kasbo, Places We Don't Know

Categories: Features, Music