Deriving their name as an amalgamation of its members’ last names, Wajatta (pronounced wa-HA-ta) is an electronic music duo that features acclaimed comedian/musician Reggie Watts and electronic music artist, producer and DJ John Tejada. With the release of 2018’s Casual High Technology and last year’s Don’t Let Get You Down, which was released through Flying Lotus‘ Briainfeeder Records, the duo established a sound that they describe broadly as “electronic dance music with its roots in Detroit techno, Chicago house, ’70s funk and New York hip-hop.”
The duo’s latest effort, the Do You Even Care Anymore EP is slated for a Friday release, and the EP’s material reportedly encompasses the next evolution of the duo’s sound. “It has developed into something a bit deeper,” Wajatta’s John Tejada says. “While our process and Reggie’s vocal improvisation work is still the same when we record, there’s just something new that we settled into this time. The music and the lyrics got a bit deeper.”
The EP’s latest single, title track “Do You Even Care Anymore” is centered around a classic, Larry Levan-like production featuring a bop jazz bass line, which reminds me of the sampled bass line in Black Sheep‘s “The Choice Is Yours,” tweeter and woofer rattling beats, twinkling bursts of synths, and a mischievous horn line sample. Reggie Watts contributes a soulful jazz standard influenced croon singing lyrics that poke and prod the listener into waking up from the mundanity of their lives, and start fully enjoying the only life they will ever know.
Directed by Mike Manor and featuring backgrounds by Waneella, the recently released video features Wajatta in an 8 bit universe rocking out for passerby and clubgoers. During the video, we see the 8 bit Reggie Watts being a warm and comforting presence encouraging all to live in the moment.
“We have all these man made constructs which mask us from intensely sobering existential dread,” Mike Manor explains. ““It’s like by default we’re all on the Titanic waiting to feel alive only when we hit the iceberg. I look at the song as a call to enjoy our lives mundanely as our true selves and to make it easier on each other by not being such judgemental d*ckheads all the time.”
