As Kan Wakan, Gueorgui I. Linev makes music that's simultaneously chilled out and expansive, touching the borders of trip-hop, acoustic balladry, and psychedelia. "I Would" is a lovesick song with an equally tender video, premiering today on The FADER. It's a black-and-white clip about a couple torn apart by various spectres, both real (impending death) and imagined (masked creeper). You can hear it on Kan Wakan's upcoming triple-LP Phantasmagoria, out next spring.
"‘I Would was the first song I started working on for the new album," Kan Wakan told The FADER over email. "My friend Elle Olsun came into the studio and I played her a nylon guitar riff I had recorded on my phone. It had been on playback in my mind for a while, and when she heard it she just went along and started singing this melody and we bounced ideas back and forth.
"There was a lot of change going on in my life at the time and ‘I Would’ drew on that curiosity. It stirs nostalgia and anxiety, like a creek meeting a river, rushing and chaotic but held tight by the undercurrent. I had gotten so used to working on projects, passing around files over the internet and not seeing outside of the 4 walls in the studio, it was really refreshing to sit by the piano and make music together. I’m continuously drawn to the human aspect of music and do my best to embrace the natural imperfections that happen in a performance."