Cat's-paw by Aperly High

Aperly High is producer and singer Albert Aagaard Hertz, who makes alternative pop as full of longing and celebration of the extremes of the spectrum of feelings as it is melodic hooks. Aperly High's music is both thematically and melodically enamored with adolescence - the way feelings feel when they're felt for the first time and the way time contracts and expands to accommodate it. First love, first heartbreak. It's for teenagers not to feel alone and for adults to remember what feelings are all about.

From the first notes of opener Work Gel, a futuristic blend of sounds reminiscent of Blink-182 and A.G. Cook is introduced, setting the scene for an album that moves in and out of references, styles and sonic spaces, where pop-punk’s melodic tendencies are flung together with avant-garde electronic music’s sense of play with rhythm and texture. From start to finish, this blend of tuneful immediacy and complex modulations and production leaves something for the nerdy and the casual listener.

On title-track Cat’s-paw, we’re anchored to the tune of a soaring sing-along chorus to imagery of still water disturbed, of knots and ties between people, of one of the album’s recurring images of bodily and mental disconnect caused by heartbreak. On single Puppyt, Enya-esque sounds combine with high school rock and Justin Bieber-hooks - a truly original blending of references surrounding an elated take on heartbreak, faking happiness so hard that you believe it. On Try Hard, the loss of identity following a break-up – feeling that you could be all sorts of people, all sorts of things, but struggling to see who and what – is obscured by a facade and a fear that you can be ‘found out’. If you don’t know what you’re looking at yourself, being seen is scary. This is set to a rolling and powerful riff that modulates in rhythmically intricate but subtle ways, once more with a roaring chorus.

Later, on Forger, Aperly High is joined by Peter Pain (Peter Bruhn of First Flush) on a duet about finding friendship in an unspoken way - a deep bond forged in escapism; helping each other heal by having a wild time together - knowing that the lows are there, but choosing to spend time together in the highs. The album closes, fittingly, with Moving On, which Albert Aagaard Hertz describes as “a semi-satirical, two-fold declaration of longing. On one hand struggling with the artifacts in everyday life, which seem to drag you back down into the rabbit hole of yearning, on the other trying to reaffirm yourself that you are on the right path and that you are, in fact, moving on. Sounds kinda pathetic, but it's also very funny to pay attention to the know-it-all side of yourself that seems to have it all figured out. Repeating the same mantra over and over again until you start to believe it.".

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Danish record label run by Lyra Valenza with graphic design by Laurits Hanak

Contact: 80petrola80(at)gmail.com

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