Akurei Turns Our Existential Switch On In “idk why the light’s on” 

A reflection on everything

We all know that 2020 sucked and 2021 ended up inheriting most of its shittiness. Like many artists, Akurei experienced a sort of creative drought along with plenty of existentialism. His latest single “idk why the light’s on” is a reflection of such time filled with uncertainty, mood swings, and endless thoughts that filled him. With its breakneck riffs and lo-fi ambience, the track resembles the incessant flow of contradictory emotions and ideas we’ve been quietly wrestling with:

Reflecting on the song, he said: “I know people are likely sick of reading this -but 2020 was a crazy year. Maxwell and I set up our record label sumoclic  and I had the ambitious idea to release three EPs. By the end of the year, I felt like I was just really trying to keep up, so I took a little time out over the summer/ start of 2021 to re-centre creatively and personally. Part of that process was buying a few synths, which I honestly hadn’t had much experience with for my own song writing. That’s probably been the best thing I’ve done in recent years for my creativity -it was exciting again to learn how to make a sound from my head, and to even have a new audio source material to be sampling. ‘idk why the light’s on’ is the result of some carefree playing, chopping, stretching and sampling from earlier this year. It’s nice to me -that it started out of a place of exploration and fun, rather than the ambition and rigor that I usually approach song-writing from. Lyrically, it’s a little bit of a reflection on part of being human -we say things we don’t sincerely mean, we see things that aren’t there, we try at things sometimes, we don’t try at things sometimes. It’s about trying to overcome that, I think.” 

The track is out now via sumclic and Brisbane fans can catch Akurei next month:

10/22 – Black Bear Lodge (Brisbane)