EP Review: Not Now

If somebody decided to make an EP out of samples they ripped from a pirate alien distress beacon it might sound like Not Now. It feels like somebody’s beaming a scrambled signal from a haunted bunker. Which is his bedroom I guess.
It’s bedroom pop.
He’s Bediquette.

Bediquette has vowed never to play live and claims to have taken “the grand tradition of bedroom pop to its logical conclusion”, which can only be producing music from the last bedroom on earth. Bediquette’s mission statement is to cater to the 2am private listening experience, “Taking inspiration from the chasms that yawn between relationships, and the uncertainty with which we navigate all human interaction.”

Not Now provides the soundtrack to saying, “you too” instead of “I’m good, how are you?” It’s a companion to rumination and the exploration of the artists own private monologue, steeped in 8 bit sleep deprived hallucination.

Ulcers opens the EP sounding like a Super Mario game freezing. Another pitch comes in higher and more layers transform the sound into chords that sometimes don’t even sound 8 bit anymore, they’re so full. Multi tracked vocals are so heavily modulated that when he describes orbiting but then admits he’s only human it sounds like a secret alien double-bluff.
‘Cos that’s what a secret alien WOULD say right?
The song settles on the final poignant stare: “The truth is I get ulcers all the time.” On that bombshell it devolves into a warbly videotaped instrumental decorated with a vocal rhythm that verges on  groovy. Ulcers feels like a person, hiding behind an alien, making confessions they’ve never said out loud.

Intention is the biggest departure from the palette of the album at large. It’s less late 2000’s Radiohead and more mid 90’s Pavement, Dinosaur JR or a bit of Kurt Vile. It’s a hopelessly catchy slacker anthem and would be perfect for any slow motion scene in a suburban coming of age movie. ”It is my intention to do you harm” is the line that still invades my brain when I’m chopping onions or doing washing. It’s sung in a beautifully lackadaisical fashion and backed by a cacophony of ‘please hold’ lines.

Text opens with that static noise that comes over amps and computers sometimes when you’re about to receive a text. There are more tones, nearly sounding like a xylophone now. Bediquette mutters flatly “this is nothing new”. The drum groove comes on and a weird guitar tone does the same notes as the vocal line. It sounds like the tone you might hear on a kids toy when you push the guitar button.

Complicate opens with TV static, odd rhythms and weird glitching variations. It sounds like twinkling stars. It feels pretty and it makes me relaxed. The steady regularity of the words “If it’s not now it’s never” belie a deeper preoccupation than the one I have with the twinkly music, but I’m happy sitting in this head space.

The final track That’s All has more anticipation. There’s a little more distortion in some of the tones. It’s trance-like, slow, emerging progressions of heart filling moments. There’s a build to what I would almost have to call a drop, which surprised me because it seemed antithetical to the Bediquette agenda, but then it dissipated immediately into an orphan drum groove and  I felt like that was the perfect way to close the EP. The silence it leaves has my head repeating “That’s all I want”.

Bediquette is a master of catchy repeated lines that sound like general conversation but feel weighty.
He’s also great at painting settings that feel like a slice of life in a purple  and yellow dimension. Not Now is a resounding success. I’ve listened to it at 2:02 am and felt my skin leave my body and go for a swim. I don’t know if that’s the effect he was going for but I like it.