The London-based New Zealander has shared "Mind's Eye," his first output of 2019. It tells of an intriguing soul-searching journey. Listen here.
Blending R&B, soul, electronic production and jazz inflections, Jordan Rakei has spent the last few years crafting a sound for himself. It worked – upon listening to his new track “Mind’s Eye,” the listener recognizes his signature tone almost immediately.
Since his acclaimed 2017 debut LP, Wallflower, Rakei has been in and out of the scene, co-writing Loyle Carner’s “Ottolenghi,” releasing “Wildfire” in May 2018, and having his music covered and remixed by the likes of Tom Misch and Photay. This new track marks the singer-songwriter-producer’s first output of 2019 and it was released by Ninja Tune.
It has more of an overt soul-searching tone than his previous releases, centered around a curious device: a “technological malfunction” that has flooded the subject’s “mind’s eye with projections of chaos causing him to question his reality.” At times it sounds hallucinatory – at others dystopian – but it always retains a gushing and mellow groove, mixed with Rakei’s fluttering upper-register vocals, which recall the accents of another London-based artist, Jamie Woon. Listen to it here:
