Veelain - a portrait of a real villain
The title seems to unravel what these nearly 37 minutes of Veelain's debut album holds for the listener. 'A Portrait Of a Real Villain' is a self-portrait that is painted in the many colors that the artist's purple heart holds.
It is from an inner search that we arrive at the galaxies that inhabit Veelain's universe. There are precedents, but this is an album that results from years of balancing introspection and its expression in sound. The artist has long put out work with some regularity, but portraits take time and art is not to be rushed.
After 'Land of the Sun', the first EP Veelain released with Monster Jinx, here is a more ambitious work, with more space, but also more direction. With "a backbone", quoting him.
"It is relevant to say (not least because the theme "Cold Bed" is about it) that there is a backbone in this album, a concrete motif and less Romantic than the others: To what extent is security not our prison? Isn't there an obsession with building a safe world? And is it worth it if the cost is to be less free? I don't have the answer to these questions yet, but I know that this is an album that starts from trauma. It is to that extent that what it tells is a journey of breaking with certain personal dogmas, in the search for Nume and that she can guide me to a new world, in this case, a new me. Villain once meant one who is not noble, that's the sense I want for myself, I am of the people and that's where I want to find myself."
And it is from this sense of belonging with the other that you need to hear 'A Portrait Of A Real Villain'. An amalgam of hip-hop a little north of the boom bap, electronica, and even some rock when you need it. The coordinates are only from Veelain, but the GPS passed by Sun Ra, Radiohead or Actress. "Scream" is only from his voice, and from him he sings for all of us to know that "People are poems".
This work, a break with the producer's musical past, "as if everything I have produced musically to date is an antechamber of the same," in his words, has the portrait on cover by Min. 'A Portrait Of a Real Villain' comes out April 28 on all digital platforms and in cassette format.