Cat Hoch
The proliferation of the Pacific Northwest’s wealth of artistry & arts continues a narrative of sea-seaking dreamers determined to create their opuses on their own terms & each according to their own brilliant design. Meet Portland’s Cat Hoch who has been gaining a wealth of buzz with her recent Look What You Found EP where the treasure-trip of discovery is expressed in sonic styles. Delivering us with news of an upcoming full-length album available later this year, Cat Hoch presents the world premiere of “Say U Love Me” that offers shimmering synths ripped from the most privy & hush-hush discotheques, insinuations of amour & plenty of invitations to dance until the night turns into the dawn break of day. Produced by Cardiod’s Riley Geare, a fantasia of an epic dance episode in a Manchester, UK venue is the setting for a sublime dance track ready for all international dance floors.
“Say U Love Me” descends like an electro comet that slams with a synthesized elegance into the audio frame as Cat Hoch illustrates the story of an imagined dance party with a missed connection that is reconnected (at least for the duration of under four minutes). The keys shine like stars in the evening sky, mimicking the flash/flicker & strobe of stage & ballroom lighting as rhythms indicate what styles of fancy footwork should be followed. Cat’s dance pop fantasy returns to a venue to find that forgotten friend that becomes much more (at least as depicted in the track), where one imagines Hoch & her mysterious mystery person taking over the entire show as the only two that matter in the entire club. Cat’s melodic yet hushed deliver moves in understated ways (complete with voice mail cadence sample-snippets) where one can already imagine a visual piece that re-imagines the setting as some kind of exotic palatial palisades complete with a chorus-line of back-up dancers.
Cat Hoch introduced her new single “Say That You Love Me” with the following words with insights on her forthcoming album:
“Say U Love Me” is the very first single off of a new full length album I’ve been working on this year. I’m hoping to finish the record sometime this summer and have been exploring a lot of new musical territory. A few years back when I was living in England, I wrote a ton of music to cope with my depression from missing the west coast. This song is a memoir of an experience I had at a show in Manchester. I went to see a band called SULK, who were wonderful, and ended up having a kind of steamy encounter with someone at the show. Nothing sexy actually happened, in fact, my friend and I ended up in Chinatown at a foot massage place getting wonton soup around 3 am. However, I wanted to rewrite a fantasy of what could have happened that night. I’m working on exploring the way I song-write; and have been straying to more electronic sounds and pop riffs. The lovely Bryson Cone played the opening synths in the beginning of the song and it became magic. My producer Riley Geare and I did the rest, and we really played around with this song. I’m excited to continue working with this kind of inspiration for the full length!
