Live Review: Oscar Key Sung is looking for a 'Simple Luv'
Oscar Key Sung announces his first EP in 5 years by sharing 'Simple Luv', an uncomplicated ode to the beauty of basic human desires for affection.
Over the past few months, OSCAR KEY SUNG has emerged from the ether and teased the release of a new project by sharing the singles, ‘Fools’ and ‘D.Y.T.’. Now he’s unveiled his latest single, ‘Simple Luv’, the first to be taken from his forthcoming EP, No Disguise, his first since 2015’s Altruism EP.
The instrumentation is appropriately pared back, evidently not feeling the need to stretch itself to overly grandeur statements to reach equally affective notes of emotional resonance. Mostly, it sounds perfectly uncomplicated and complacent in where it is. An ARTHUR RUSSELL-indebted string section opens the track by resisting the temptation to fall into cloying sentimentality. From there, it moves as a constant beneath lightly morphing R&B percussion, a pulsing vibraphone and Oscar’s understated vocal performance, allowing us to feel our own interpretations of this simple love, rather than telling us how and what to feel. On his own idea of what this love looks like, Oscar croons on the chorus: “I’m hoping for a simple love / It’s just around the other side / Of these winds and turns / Tunnels without a light”.
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Of the track, Oscar says that: “‘Simple Luv’ is a naive and hopeful manifestation spell. I intended to conjure all I want by imagining it clearly in a song. It is implicit in the song that I have been lost: “tunnels without a light”. But for no smart reason I still believe there is a veritable garden of Eden waiting just beyond. When I say “watch it all back like flash”, it is a reference to the movie “Tampopo” where a charter explains that when we die, a kaleidoscope of our best memories plays before our eyes like a film in our final breath. Like flash".
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‘Simple Luv’ moves away from the club-friendly beats of ‘Fools’ and the late night desire of ‘D.Y.T.’. Instead, ‘Simple Luv’ feels like the fog of the early morning, rays of sunlight cutting through the curtains as you wake up next to your partner and the openness of a new day together stretches ahead of you. It’s one of our most simple human desires - to wake up next to someone you love, and who loves you back. On ‘Simple Luv’, Oscar Key Sung distills these desires into three minutes of pure, uncomplicated beauty.
No Disguise is out May 25th via Good Manners.
Oscar will be touring nationally behind his No Disguise EP - you can find all the details and tickets below:
Photo via Facebook
Words by Kyle Fensom
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