Adorned with bubbly beats and a vocal harmony that is as smooth as silk in all the right spots, Katmaz’s “Alone (With Me),” both in its single and music video formats, is a tough article to put down once listeners have come into contact with its sharp hooks, and I highly doubt I’m the only critic to confirm as much this late winter season. Influenced as much by electropop aesthetics as it is progressive-minded indie rock with a slight nod to the post-punk psychedelia of an 80’s generation (albeit a much lighter variety by all accounts), “Alone (With Me)” is a chic pop single packed with mild frills that contrast heavily with its minimalist framework, but nevertheless, it’s one of my favorite new underground tracks to debut in recent memory.
After getting lost in the hypnotic rhythm of this single following but a cursory examination of its slender bassline and unsophisticated, but wholly embracive, vocal virtuosities, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of a direction Katmaz would go next in his music. He’s come a long way in a short amount of time, cultivating a raw instrumental technique that comes flanked by a polished lyrical attack here.
If his goal is to eventually enter the mainstream on the back of this sound, he’ll have to push the aesthetical needle just a bit further than he does in this latest track, but in my personal opinion, I don’t think that Katmaz has very far left to travel on the road to success. Frankly, with chops like his, I believe he deserves a lot more hype than he’s actually getting at the moment.
