- Delicate folk embellished with field recordings makes for Tim Zha's most sedate, beautiful record yet.
- What do Lil Yachty and Cocteau Twins have in common? Both are known for captivatingly incomprehensible lyrics in their respective genres. Yachty catapulted SoundCloud rap into the mainstream with his youthful, mumbled cadence, while Cocteau Twins have eluded critics for decades with their tangles of indecipherable words. To the chagrin of disgruntled artists who prefer their lyrics to remain an obscurity to the public, this phenomenon can lead perplexed critics, fans and even streaming services to incorrectly ascribe meaning to music that never pretended to have much of it in the first place.
In 2017, a dramatic example of this broke the internet. Tierra Whack's viral hit "MUMBO JUMBO"—a song of improvised syllables and made-up words—stumped fans who couldn't resist rinsing the track despite its unintelligibility. Though Genius users took it upon themselves to pen their own versions of the "words," Whack has admitted that there simply are none. She traditionally mumbles a guide vocal in her tracks before filling in the details later, but that time she and her producer agreed that the song, anchored by a melancholy beat and catchy, gibberish hooks, didn't need the extra work.
Tim Zha, AKA Organ Tapes, knows that without lyrics as the focal point, other sonic elements can become the hook. Across his catalog, watery electronics, muffled cyborg vocals and slowly unspooling melodies make an intriguing canvas for listeners to project their own ideas on. Having spent as much time in his youth watching 50 Cent and Eminem on MTV Asia as he did listening to ambient, rock and noise music, he's committed to a genre-defying approach to, for lack of a better word, sadboi music.
Named after a line in "Chun Tian Li," a song by Chinese rock musician Wang Feng, the title of his latest album, 唱着那无人问津的歌谣（Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao), roughly translates to, "Sing the song that no one cares about." In a way, this is what Zha's music is all about. His words, choked by effects, are nearly indistinguishable. There are no official lyrics to reference. But it feels fitting: these stylings could be interpreted as a symptom of hypermodernity. Each new record's verbal sludge captures the zeitgeist of an increasingly quasi-intellectual digital generation known for consuming endless amounts of data, yet retaining only a fraction of it.
This new album smudges the acoustic pop of Zha's 2019 LP, Hunger In Me Living, projecting an aura of idle quietude with nostalgic washes of indie rock, folk and shoegaze. Homing in on simple, repeated lyrical refrains and light guitar strums, the album is a treasure trove of instantly hummable verses, even if the actual words are difficult to parse. On the record's most endearing tracks—"line" and "demise"—moony repetition reigns supreme while scratchy post-punk riffs and the occasional guitar screech plays off the mumbled, subaquatic vocals.
Largely capped at three minutes, these songs are humble and unhurried. There are tracks like "brink" that unfurl in the manner of intimate, slow-paced vignettes. Relying heavily on ambling folk and rock guitar chords, some of the album's most inspired moments arrive in its quietest regions. Zha dips into his lower register on "submission," one of the more bare-bones tracks, repeatedly moaning the song's title backed only by guitar and his harmonizing, digitized vocals. Though the unintelligible droning on 唱着那无人问津的歌谣 occasionally feels monotonous, there's a comfort in surrendering to the many slides of the album's pastoral foliage, like returning to a sleepy hometown that seldom changes.
The use of field recordings only intensifies this homey feeling. On "heaven can wait," you get the sense that time has slowed as Zha groans, "how old does a dog have to be?," elongating the last syllable with ineffable mystique. Further into the track, conversations murmur in the distance, someone solos on guitar and there's some rustling that indicates the person recording has somehow lost control of their device. Suddenly, the music sounds just inches away from us, safely nestled in our reality. On "never had," garbled audio crackles through the melismatic vocals, and on "how you will," excited slices of dialogue occasionally peek out of dark, wistful corners. With all its home documentary-style snippets, the album's songs share obfuscated stories that lean toward us yet keep us just at arm's-length.
Having dipped his toes into the waters of pop, R&B, rock and now folk, there's a sedated beauty to the music Tom Zha makes as Organ Tapes, regardless of the genres he's tapping into. 唱着那无人问津的歌谣 confirms a truth that fans of electronic music, mumble rap and elliptical dream pop have known for years: sometimes you don't need lyrics. The vibe will suffice.
Tracklist01. Eventually He Will Come Into My Life
02. How You Will
03. Line feat. Glasear
04. Acid & Wine (Bludgeon)
05. Here And Now feat. CNS Glo
06. Brink
07. Heaven Can Wait
08. Submission
09. ID
10. Earned
11. Never Had
12. The Rope
13. 忘了一切 feat. Munni
14. Demise feat. Severin Glance
15. Passin Through
16. Pluto
17. The Voter