The grand online mystery that is Just A Number 05272011 gets a melancholic revamp with Lisa Alma's remix of "He Didn't Want A Love Song," as well as a simple, black-and-white accompanying video. We covered and followed-up on Just A Number sometime back, and wondered aloud, with every other lucid blog writer, what will happen on May 27, 2011? We're five days away now, post-Rapture and still kicking, and what we do know is that, if nothing else, May 27 is the date of Just A Number's first live show at the Spot festival in Denmark.
If you can't make it to Denmark, quench your Just A Number cravings below:
Two days ago, Just A Number 05272011 quietly released a new mp3 to TheFader. "Business" indulges a more club-oriented vein than the earlier tunes, "He Didn't Want a Love Song," and "The Pain," both of which we covered a few weeks back.
In our minds, the rise of Just A Number 05272011 is inseparable from that of the rather unfortunately named Christian AIDS (also on our blog some weeks ago), maybe because they caught our attention--and then everyone else's--at nearly the same time. In that respect, we hope (or do we?) that the two outfits aren't somehow playing a nasty trick on us: if you asked a paranoid, he might say you could hear the rave-happy Christian AIDS producing the track behind those shrieking vocals. They're probably not one in the same, but still. Now we've got you thinking.
That said, this is excellent music, and we should all be happy for the mystery...while it lasts*.
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*We would like to throw our hats in here to offer, perhaps, a possible solution to the mystery of Just A Number 05272011. Now, while the moniker sort of suggests that we not question whether the number is anything other than a number--it's "just a number," no need to investigate--the opening line of The Fader's post caused a thought to pop miraculously into our heads:
Just A Number 05272011 have, bar none, the most unwieldy name ever in the history of time and all names in all art forms ever. Just kidding probably. It’s up there for sure though.
It just sort of occurred to us--and I'm sure to many before us--that the number is a date. Maybe for an album: 05/27/2011. Who knows?
Just A Number 05272011 is the self-effacing, mysterious moniker of some unknown individual, male or female, or perhaps a collective--the point is, nobody knows. It seems that every time we hear a haunted-sounding pop opus, we suspect Karin Dreijer Andersson (the lady behind Fever Ray, and one half of The Knife) of hiding beneath a witch's cloak, donning a new pseudonym under which she will reinvent her signature sounds that have, in her relatively short time, changed the electronic music scene. The high-pitched, moaning vocals on Just A Number 05272011's "He Didn't Want a Love Song," and "The Pain," certainly conjure Fever Ray's spooked atmosphere, but our mystery artist doesn't rest on simply imitating another musician. "He Didn't Want a Love Song" hovers between worlds of dark warbling and cosmic, almost tropical pop--the accompanying, simple video suggests nothing to the viewer, presenting only the nakedness of the song:
Equally as enjoying, if perhaps a more ambitiously pop-driven number, "The Pain" moves from rainy night sky gloom to island vacation with a sudden breeziness that propels the listener with an almost narcotic strength through the cut.
We'll be keeping track of this slippery, pronoun-resistant artist, and we suggest you do, too. For now, the only message we have from him/her/they is: "we are just a number 05272011"; we'll be waiting for more.
