Krrum

Krrum was one of the first bands I ever sat down to record a Ditty episode about. Eight years on, I still haven't heard another fucking person mention him out loud, online, in print, anywhere. So this is me, still doing it.

Krrum, spelled k-r-r-u-m. For the longest time I thought it was a band, and I thought they were Australian. Neither is true. It's one guy called Alex, from the Peak District, who has worked with a few other artists and then gone quiet. The last thing he released was Honeymoon in 2018, and that's basically what we're going to talk about today, because eight years on it is still in heavy fucking rotation for me.

For context, six of the twelve tracks on Honeymoon made my Spotify Wrapped most-played list back when I first did this episode: Blessing in a Black Dress, Still Love, Moon, Evil Twin, Hard on You, and If That's How You Feel. Six. Out of one album. From an artist who hasn't put anything new out in eight years. That tells you something.

I'm picking four tracks today.

Slow intro, then around 27 seconds a brass thing comes in (trumpet, possibly, I am not the right person to ask) and the vocals land and we're off.

"Looking like a Hitchcock scene, I've been sleeping under trampolines. If I get the chance, guess I'll blame it on other me."

This is about messing something up so badly that you'd quite like the version of yourself who did it to be a separate person. The drunk you. The not-thinking-clearly you. The Tuesday-night you. Other me. I cannot work out if he's talking to someone else or to himself, and I think that's the point. Both are possible, both are the same problem.

The hook: "'cause you're the only one that understands that I'm hopeless, you're the only one to give a damn that I'm broken." Light beat underneath, easy to bop to, then you actually read the lyrics and it's all help me I'm broken. Sneaky bastard.

It's sat at over 12 million streams. The video is also worth your time if you enjoy people who look like other people doing things.

This one starts genuinely sinister. Heavy, slow, and you're sat there wondering what you've put on. Then about 34 seconds in there's a woooh!, the bottom drops out, and suddenly you're somewhere airy.

What I like about Waves is the chop. He keeps switching between the sinister bass-led bit and the lighter, almost weightless top, and the contrast is the whole point. Most producers would settle on one of those two moods and ride it. He won't.

There's another woooh! around 1:40 that sets up the second half. I won't spoil where it goes.

I will say: I don't always get on with female vocals. About 98% of what I listen to is male. There's a feature voice on this track that absolutely earns its place, and it makes me question my own settings. So that's nice for me to learn about myself in real time on a podcast.

The longest track title on the album and the most upbeat-sounding song.

"If you call on me, we'll be sleeping around. If you call on me, never settle down."

It's bouncy. It's catchy. It's also entirely about a relationship being over and the part of you that knows it. He says he wouldn't want to be your fade-out, and then he basically is. The structural joke of the whole track is that the music keeps lifting and the lyrics keep falling.

There's a woah! in there at around 2:27 that I had to rewind for, and a high light synthy line that runs underneath the whole thing without ever stepping on the bass. The bass is doing the work. The little floating top line is decoration. Both can be true.

In the breakdown interview about the album, Krrum said this was meant to be the end of side one of the vinyl. The first six tracks (Blessing in a Black Dress, Still Love, Waves, Phase, Moon, Doom is the Mood I'm In) are one cycle. The next six (Evil Twin, You're So Cool, If That's How You Feel, Hard on You, I Thought I Murdered You?, Honey I Feel Like Sinning) are the other side of the same relationship. He thought about the album as two sides of one thing. Listen to it that way once and the structure will reorganise in your head.

The opener. And honestly the standout, even though Evil Twin is the famous one.

You get hit on the intro, then the slow build of "are you...", and then around 20 seconds, "tell me if I'm another one for you," and the whole thing locks in. There's a break at about 44 seconds that resets the room.

This is the closure track. He's pulling apart whether what he had was real, or whether he was just one of a list, and the lyrics are unusually direct: "tell me if I'm just another one for you, I don't think I can be another one if I do." Then later: "it's best that we dress before the fever grows, it's reckless to guess so you should let me know."

Headphones. Close your eyes. There is so much going on in the middle ground of this track that you will not catch on a phone speaker. High-pitched layers, scratch-fret texture, the bass underneath holding the floor.

This is the track I keep coming back to.

What fucking annoys me about Honeymoon is the spread of plays. Evil Twin is over 13 million. I Thought I Murdered You? is sitting around 30,000.

Same album. Same artist. Same recording sessions. The difference is that one of them ended up in a sync deal and the other one didn't, and the algorithm did the rest. Some of the best tracks here are the ones nobody is reaching for. Once one song from a record gets picked up by an advert or a film, that becomes the whole artist for most listeners, and the rest of the album might as well not exist. That irritates me. It also means there's an entire half of Honeymoon sitting there, mostly unheard, ready for you.

We're going out on Hard on You. The intro to it has a line in the bass I cannot describe but I'll give it a go: lower than you expect, slower than you expect, sits underneath the vocal like something dragging you down a corridor. Have a listen.

Laters on a menjay.

Z

AD BREAK

Yeah. That Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So do Codie Sanchez, Scott Galloway, Colin & Samir, Shaan Puri, and Jay Shetty. And none of them are doing it for fun. They're doing it because a list you own compounds in ways that social media never will.

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