Adam Lempel
Having recently returned to New York from adventures spent abroad in Amsterdam, Adam Lempel follows up the recent single “Let’s Be Real” with a first listen to the addictive new anthem “Run (Disconnected)”. From the previous track that was arranged via overseas texts & Skype quips & messages; Lempel creates an electric ode to our obsessive runnings & ramblings about in the connected/plugged-in world without being connected to anyone (or truly anything) at all.
“Run (Disconnected)” finds Adam embodying the paradox of our modern day existence & methodologies of communication. The feelings felt from a session of instant messengering, DM-ing & the sort are found in sound effects that mimic the digital server sends & responses that correspond to the beeps, bleeps, boops & bops that are heard on our collective devices from phone, tablet, laptop to desktop setups. These familiar & catchy noises are put on rhythmic loops that are met with Lempel’s application of harmonic, electrified chords that convey the curious nature contemporary discourse. The complicated nature of how we correspond to one another’s dialogue, thoughts & desires from two parties being just around the block from one another—to being across the universe—”Run (Disconnect)” paces at the speed of the world’s spin & orbit with affections expressed in an arrangement that we all can relate (and connect) to according to our own respective experiences.
Adam Lempel shared with the us the following exclusive reflections on the new single “Run (Disconnected)” with these insightful words:
I just got back to NYC from living in Amsterdam for the past three years following my decade in Baltimore’s DIY music scene opening for bands like Dan Deacon, Future Islands. I went to Amsterdam to get a masters degree in music design and also got involved with a sync company, resulting in my song “Echo” landing in a spot on a European TV lingerie commercial for C&A, kind of like the German H&M.
While there, I was also working on my newest album, Jinx, collaborating with my classmate, Friso Hoekstra producing it. Unlike past albums, a lot of these songs were constructed in a computer, at the same time I had a growing fascination with the world of virtual reality and started was sculpting in VR in the Oculus Rift program Medium and feeling more and more at home in the texture of the virtual world. I really loved Amsterdam and the scene there, but I started to find myself spending more and more time online chatting and Skyping with friends of mine back home. I got involved in an across-the-pond-romance lived out through screens, hurrying home to hang out via Skype and Facebook Messenger, in a kind of augmented reality. “Run (Disconnected)” is about fantasizing about breaking free from our screens, but at the same time getting lost in a virtual world that looks and feels more and more real but is still fundamentally disconnected from regular old reality. Because our relationships are happening more and more in this virtual world, maybe there is no escape, only going deeper and deeper into it.
Produced by Friso Hoekstra. Mixed and Mastered by Wessel Oltheten. Background vocals by Lindsay Carone. Drums by Tcheser Holmes. I just started painting and the cover art is the first painting I’ve made, I made it last month. Hope you like!
Listen to more from Adam Lempel via Soundcloud.
