Polaris-nominated Kimmortal is stepping back in, ushering in the labyrinth of creativity and life today holds with the release of "Strange Maze," featuring Super Duty Tough Work. This is a meditation on the pressures, paradoxes, and potential of modern artistry, all seen through an emancipatory and empowering lens. Kimmortal's dexterity across mediums is evident in "Strange Maze."
Raised on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh and born to Filipino parents, Kimmortal approaches their work from a deeply personal and diasporic perspective. Their art is a blend of hip-hop, neo-soul, theater, spoken word, and visual storytelling, all at once. With some help from Brendan Grey of Super Duty Tough Work, the self-produced track draws from that rich tapestry for something as intelligent as it is tantalizing. Produced by Junia-T, "Strange Maze" blends study-beat tones with jazz-hop grooves and chill-hop hues to overlay a soundscape that sounds personal and epic at once.
The instrumentation here is deceptively tense, matching the song's dive into attention economies, hyperconsumption, and the ceaseless strains placed on creatives in the digital era. But for all its introspective weight, the music itself pulses with energy, beckoning you to wind your way through the maze with its creators. The video, directed, filmed, and edited by Steve Roste and produced by Junia-T, features the visuals accompanying the track, which can be found below. Its cinematic approach suits the words, providing snapshots of a world where creativity, commerce, and identity come together.
The video becomes a space in which diasporic and queer identities are joyfully celebrated, and the messy, beautiful complexity of artistic life is exposed. "Strange Maze" is indicative of Kimmortal's talent for making intellectually stimulating music that you can also cry to. It's a quick and piercing meditation on how today's creators walk the line between self-expression and external expectation. On this release, Kimmortal and Super Duty Tough Work not only take us on, but also bring us on a contemplative journey, an experience of the joy, frustration, and freedom of the creative process.
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