Tag: Kainalu Folds Like Origami

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the course of 2017 and 2018, I wrote a bit about Trent Prall, a Southern California-born, Madison,WI--based producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter, and his solo recording project Kainalu, which derives its name for the Hawaiian word for ocean wave.  The music that the Southern California-born, Madison,WI-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter has worked on for the past decade or so have drawn from psych pop, psych rock, dream pop, Tropicalia, synth pop and funk, as well as his childhood trips to Oahu, HI visiting his mother’s family, coalescing in a breezy and nostalgia-including sound that Prall has dubbed “Hawaii-fi.”

“Finding Peace of Mind” and “Folds Like Origami” consecutively landed at #1 on the Hype Machine Charts and received placements on some top Spotify playlists, and with the growing buzz surrounding him, there was high expectations for Prall to quickly write and release a career-launching debut EP. But rather than get swept up into the current of premature opportunities and expectations, the Southern California-born, Madison, WI-based JOVM mainstay spent the next year in isolation, exploring the unfiltered daydreams of a wandering mind and capturing ideas on tape whenever they drifted by. Interestingly, the end result is his long-awaited and highly-anticipated full-length debut Lotus Gate.

Slated for release this fall, the self-produced Lotus Gate is reportedly a retro-futuristic exploration of Eastern philosophy and contemporary groove and self-exploratory  psychedelia. The album’s latest single “Kamikaze Mushroom Palace” is centered around a warm and trippy, disco-tinged groove, shimmering and arpeggiated synths, a soaring hook and Prall’s ethereal falsetto — and while the single sonically sounds indebted to Tame Impala, but with the song’s narrator expressing an inward yearning to get their shit straight by any and all costs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the last half of 2017, I had written a it about Trent Prall, a Southern California-born, Wisconsin-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter and his solo recording project Kainalu, which derives its name for the Hawaiian word for ocean wave. And as you may recall, the music that Prall has created over the past decade or so draws from psych pop, psych rock, dream pop, Tropicalia, synth pop and funk, as well as childhood trips to Oahu, Hawaii visiting his mother’s family. Ultimately, those influences have coalesced and culminated in a breezy, retro-futuristic and somewhat nostalgia-inducing sound that the Southern California-born, Wisconsin-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter has dubbed “Hawaii-fi,” as a homage to his Hawaiian ancestry and their influence on him and his work.

 

Prall’s breezy latest single “Folds Like Origami” reminds me a bit of Illumination-era Miami Horror and Tame Impala, as the song finds Prall drawing from late 70s and early 80s synth funk, disco, contemporary synth pop and dream pop in a seamless fashion while crafting crowd-pleasing, dance floor friendly hooks paired with thoughtful lyrics. As Prall explains in press notes, growing up in Hawaiian culture, folding origami was deeply rooted into every wedding he attended. The bride is supposed to fold 1,000 paper cranes symbolizing the patience she will have in the marriage; however, according to Prall, “it’s usually the bride’s family, who actually ends up doing the folding.”  Understandably, a young Trent Prall was amazed but the beauty and complexity of transforming something relatively basic and simple into something beautiful — without changing or adding anything to the material itself.

“I wanted to try and capture this imagery and apply it a person’s worldview. The line of the song for me is ‘The world opens up to you, it folds like origami. So drop the things you knew, they fold like origami.’ Recently, I’ve been getting more and more into meditation. I kind of see a parallel between origami with mediation. By finding peace within yourself, I think you can make your own beautiful in the world around you. Just like by finding a new shape within a flat piece of paper, you can create a beautiful peace of art” the Southern California-born, Wisconsin-based producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter says.