- "Cindy Savalas," a track from Palmbomen II's self-titled 2015 LP, is named after a minor character from The X-Files, as were the album's other tracks. The Holland-born, California-based producer Kai Hugo has since imagined the world she might occupy, first in a video depicting her as a wan young woman who believed she was an alien, then in a four-part series of EPs released last year. The results are compiled on Palmbomen II's latest LP, Memories Of Cindy.
Whereas the original "Cindy Savalas" sparkled with the sunshine of Hugo's adopted home, the mood here seems more overcast. The album is accompanied by a series of films, based on a fictional public access TV channel with grainy colours, a deadpan host and adverts for funeral parlours and UFO cults. Making music for forgotten broadcasts from an imaginary past moves Hugo in spirit (if not necessarily sound) towards the label Ghost Box.
As with the films, unnerving things can be glimpsed below the album's surface. On one level, "I Feel Everything" is almost health spa fodder, complete with new age tones and running water, but the voice—presumably Cindy's—talks about drowning rather than floating. The syrupy "Peter Accepts Death" would sound similarly serene were it not for the refrain—"please accept death"—throughout. He also emphasises artifice—the exotica sounds of "145" are as flimsy as a plastic Buddha statue.
Even the upbeat moments can be eerie. You can imagine hearing "RTL Unifeeder" or "Dreams Always Come Thru" on a dance floor, but the beats fade beneath minor key melodies and spectral vocals. The club they seem designed for might be the fictional "Dancing & Crying" venue advertised in one of Hugo's films, with a playlist of "sensitive music" that includes Legowelt, Slowdive and Cocteau Twins.
The illusory happiness presented on Memories Of Cindy becomes, after 22 tracks, a mirage-like blur, as if the product of tranquilisers rather than genuine inner peace. In the end, Cindy remains a mystery. Like the central character in the dreamlike world he's created, Hugo's music can sometimes seem insubstantial. Yet the way in which Memories Of Cindy melts away mirrors memory itself: the details fade, but the emotions linger.
Tracklist01. I Feel Everything
02. Pure Tibet
03. ALOHAnet
04. Seventeen
05. RTL Unifeeder
06. Peter Accepts Death
07. Pyrotechnomarco
08. Forever Afsluitdijk
09. IAO Industries video
10. Transportzone Meer
11. Dancing & Crying
12. Ultimate Lovestory Fantasy
13. Wilco's Funeral
14. Teleac
15. Disappointment Island
16. Fat Director
17. Cyber Tears
18. Are You Friends With Amber?
19. Can It Be
20. 145
21. Dreams Always Come Thru
22. Messed It Up