Bleep

hooke’s law states that to extend or compress a spring, you need a force proportional to its change in distance. The longer or shorter the distance, the more force needed to change, the more effort required to bring things closer together or further apart. In an expertly considered artistic statement with her second album, keiyaA asks: how much does it take to make people closer or drive them apart? How far does she have to go to bring her message to our ears, to our hearts and minds, or to change herself?

It reminds of the golden era of R&B and neosoul: when lyrical stories and witty turns of phrase abounded (“pastrami on rye, place me in your bread and take a bite”), everyday situations and interactions and strifes made relatable through dramatisation, through irresistibly funky grooves that cross the canon of Black musics. keiyaA’s vocals have never been so on point, from velvet harmonies to playful expressions like a telephone gossip/vent sesh as she admonishes foolish landlords. Her production is minimal yet expansive, waves of warmly distorted synth melodies, gusts of drums breathing into ticking beats, broken rhythms and flutes flurrying while she contemplates how the modern world came to be.

Like a dream, this compositional breeze carries her imagistic stream of consciousness on its winds. “Kissing and touching” ushers crashes of broken glass, arcade game bumper sounds and tasteful autotune explore pressure and friction. One moment keiyaA is feeling out harmonic shifts and interrogating her intimacy, the next she pointedly demands, “Just gimme space, aight?”, while smoked out murky breakbeats clobber beneath the surface, getting clearer when her sense of fight surfaces.

Vulnerable and confrontational in equal measure, hooke’s law is a cleverly cathartic evolution for keiyaA.