Swedish producer and multi-instrumentalist Alec Baker, whose real name is Viktor Jansåker, revels in the euphoria of great cinematic pop music. Whether the base mood is joyful or melancholy, the music is kept moving, changing perspective and tone as various textures appear and disappear without warning. At times vivid and weightless, but also dense and opaque when necessary, Baker carefully shapes these sounds into a riotous explosion of florescent pop arrangements and sensory-subsuming bouts of rhythmic calisthenics. His work is incandescent and prone to sudden melodic shifts, resulting in a series of art-pop revelations that operate from within the confines of countless fluctuating sonic landscapes.
Before all of this Covid-19 horribleness, Baker spent a good chunk of the last two years travelling between studios in Sweden, London, and New York working on the foundations of the songs that would form the basis of his upcoming EP which is due out later this summer. From late nights in smoky jazz clubs to friendships formed and developed through the turbulence of innumerable studio sessions, every experience that surrounded this period of time would become fodder for the expansive synth-soaked psych-pop soundscapes that flowed so effortlessly through his considerable melodic ingenuity.
His latest single, “Something About You”, produced by Summer Heart and featuring vocal melodies and lyrics from experimental pop purveyor MANX, is pure art-pop bliss, anchored by sugary harmonies and atmospheric synths that circle one another is a graceful dance of rhythmic entanglement. Contrasting the music, the song details the story of lovers whose affections are becoming slowly disentangled, though they still hold out hope for better days ahead. The track is genuinely heartbreaking and possesses a melancholic heart that yearns for connection and emotional resolution.
Directed by Basliel Berhane, the song’s accompanying video is suitably and oddly affecting, meshing Wes Anderson-esque visuals with the lithe movements of dancer Marcus Møller, who choreographed the routine. Working his way through various postures and positions, Møller creates a real-time corporeal parallel of the song’s musical themes, turning his physical responses into a session of seemingly spontaneous performance art. The languid poses he continually offers as the music rolls along with him are perfectly calibrated to accentuate the free-flowing schedules of Baker’s precise musical impulses, with each adding depth to the other’s presentation.
