Song of the Day: OCNotes - Hum Drum Killas

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Afternoon Show with Kevin Cole, is “Hum Drum Killas” by OCNotes from the 2015 album Color Wheel on HomeSkillet Records.

OCNotes - Hum Drum Killas (MP3)

The genre-bending musician Otis Calvin III is one of Seattle's more prolific artists, both in a collaborative and solo capacity under the moniker OCNotes. Discovering a passion for music as a youth in church, Calvin's musical range is only rivaled by his release rate – a quick look at his Bandcamp page shows 14 releases dating back to 2006, including a radical reimagining of the soundtrack to The Wiz, a cover of Beck's Song Reader, and his latest release, 2015's Color Wheel. A track from the lattermost album, "Hum Drum Killas" is a smoke-filled room, with beguiling fragments of sounds coming out of every corner. To call the song heady is an understatement – it walks the edge of having little more structure than it's drum programming, but that just makes it more intriguing. Notes' vocal performance, highly processed and drenched in echo and delay, is a looming presence over the track, daftly floating around leaving no space untouched. With as many loose pieces moving around in the track as there are, it would be easy to label "Hum Drum Killas" as spacey, but the track is anything but: each clattering, fuzzy part works in its space with distinct purpose, creating a fully-formed opiate-like trip that lets the listener get lost in the smoke and stay there, soaking it all in.

Keep up with OCNotes on his website and Facebook, where he'll announce future shows and music. Below, watch him play "Number 7" live on KEXP in 2012.