Hecojeni’s new single Trampoline Girl is pure, unfettered alternative. The kind of song you’d hear regularly on stations like my native Alice @ 97.3 or Star 101.3 on a Saturday afternoon, off to a picnic at the park, a trip to the museum, or an afternoon at the movies. Trampoline Girl has this breeziness, deliberately uncanny sound mix, and decidedly acoustic, beachfront vibe that makes the melody infectious. For someone who is a child of the nineties, it reminded me a lot of what I’ve been missing when listening to popular music.
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576729321715
A sort of fully formed identity, plus a radiance that comes with said identity being at the forefront of the listening experience. Harkening back to a time when listening to a song almost felt like getting to know the artist on a personal level, if not on a fact-based basis then in terms of sensibilities, which feels almost more intimate. Given the body of work Hecojeni has produced over the years, this is an active move, not incidental or a natural byproduct of their musical proclivities. Hecojeni seems interested in putting naturally made music and evocative lyricism back on the charts.
Like many independent or self-representing musical acts featured on the likes of YouTube and Spotify, things have simultaneously shifted to never being more competitive, but the competition being based on meritocratic value. There’s so much material on the web that to stand out, you have to be doing something not just right, but different.
There are plenty of musical acts harkening back twenty years to when 2000s alternative reigned supreme. Many are good. Some stand out as unique contributions worshipping at the altar of musical acts like Duncan Sheikh or The Wallflowers. Hecojeni takes it a step further by actually defining a distinctive identity within that algebra, mixing a slick, postmodern touch with a kind of nostalgic wistfulness for times of old. It’s this dichotomy making Hecojeni really click as a competitive duo, not sacrificing one for the other, willing to artistically exchange one set of complications for another. In reviewing their previous work, Mark Druery for IndieShark Music Magazine summarizes these traits as follows. “The imaginative yet unusual aesthetic fueling Hecojeni’s musical art is born from influences as diverse as college rock, folk-rock, alternative, and indie.
They are firing down a highly individual trail that erases the traditional distance between performer and audience and encourages an unlikely but stirring collaboration between the creators and their audience,” he writes. “Jeff Niebuhr and Heath Cobb’s brainchild, Hecojeni…is ragged but right…The light electrification of the instrumentation gives it an one of a kind sound. Off-kilter guitar playing flubs and clams its way through the performance with an absolute unabashed disregard for conventional polish, and fills the performance with a woozy spirit befitting its content.”
Hecojeni marks an exciting new chapter in a post-popular music era. It really signifies the art returning to the hands of the artist, not the corporate behemoth representing them. The result is a period of experimentation, freedom, and genuine innovation.
Chadwick Easton