KENSHIRO+ - Of A Million Crowns
Review by KIZUNAUT
KENSHIRO+ is an electronic musician from Budapest, Hungary. He has his roots in the metal and hardcore scene, starting his musical ventures by picking up the bass as a teen. His current project was born during his university years when he started producing solo because he didn’t have the time to play in bands. While KENSHIRO+’s music has a solid base of synthwave influence, he has always been into the idea of blending together different genres, enjoying acts such as Nine Inch Nails and Celldweller that mix electronics and rock, heaviness and elegance.
Of A Million Crowns is the third EP from the Hungarian artist. The EP draws its central themes from ideas that are unusually relevant to real-life events compared to a lot of synthwave music out there. Dealing with ideas of identity, the desire to give away responsibility to others and humanity’s collective burden of taking leadership for itself, the EP comes from a genuine place of powerful inspiration. Coming at the tail end of the Omicron Corona wave, the artist elaborated the ideas behind the EP to me with the following words: “(KENSHIRO+) is meant to express values and ideas that anyone can stand for or relate to… I definitely felt like I’m saying something we are all thinking: The world is collapsing above our heads ad we either learn to carry it together or it will crush us all”.
Musically, KENSHIRO+ sought to find new directions after his previous EP, Vantablack Hearts, saying that he felt he had done everything he could with synthwave. Seeking ways to expand his sound, KENSHIRO+ sought to go for a heavier sound while also incorporating influences from post-rock. He also decided to incorporate some spoken word elements, feeling that they would be a way to elaborate on the central themes of the EP. The overall tone of the album hits a wonderful bittersweet spot, with many of the tracks sounding equal part melancholic and hopeful, fragile and defiant in a way that harmonizes with the core themes very well.
The end result is an enjoyable mix of influences with a big heart, which however suffers somewhat from some production flaws. While the tracks have clarity and utilize the stereo image effectively, the EP is somewhat inconsistently mixed from track to track, and often the drums are lacking in impact. The production feels rather airy, not bad in itself, but I feel a more aggressively compressed style would have suited the material better. The flaws in production, however, are not severe enough to make the EP unenjoyable for me as the compositions and ideas are strong enough to carry it through.
On to the music itself, the EP starts with The Invitation of a Few (intro), a very short intro consisting of a bassline rising in volume, a string part and a with a spoken word part over it, narrating how humanity has become divided, it’s leaders have abandoned us and how people are now looking for a leader to rally behind, the “Monarch for the Rest of Us”. The intro bridges directly into Fate Is A Sleeping Slave, a synthwave piece that mixes together driving rhythm guitar with bending, sweeping string leads. The latter half is more atmospheric, featuring ethereal choirs hovering over the rhythm elements. A very solid and quite uplifting track.
You’re Still Yourself opens with a mix of deep synth bass, a bright saw arp and organ pads before the track kicks off with a rock-inspired rhythm, building up layer by layer, alteration by alteration as the track moves on. The mix of arps, synths and changing rhythms paints a kind of hopeful, defiant atmosphere and is perhaps the best example of post-rock influences on this album. The latter half features a spoken word part about how humans are the architects of their own identity.
Behelit offers a bit more metal-influenced offering, bursting into life with a mix of sinister, mysterious arps, skittering drums and heavy, sweeping synths, alternating between more traditional darksynth parts and parts that very strongly recall metalcore played with synths to my ears. The latter half features a very synthetic breakdown that also brings in some rather esoteric sounding wailing choirs.
Not So Fragile is my favorite track from the EP. The track starts with dusty, forlorn synth horns before coming into life in a mix of bending synths and driving rhythms. The track has fantastic energy that mixes melancholy with optimism in a way that fits the name of the track perfectly. The breakdown in the middle of the track is extremely powerful and memorable for reasons that are hard to articulate: it reminds me of some kind of high-tech melee duel.
The album ends with The Coronation of Millions (outro), which segues immediately from the end of Not So Fragile. It simply features synths fading out and the narrator from the intro returning, this time telling that all humanity’s candidates for leadership have rejected the crown, and instead humanity has chosen to take control of its own destiny.
KENSHIRO+ has talent both as a composer and conveyor of ideas. While the EP is a bit rough on the edges when it comes to the production side, I think it only makes this more human.
Of A Million Crowns comes from a rare place of inspiration, exploring current, very pressing issues in a fresh, original manner. I first listened to this when it came out several months ago, and it felt like it captured something very ephemeral about that transitional period out of omikron and into the future. Sadly, the future has turned out to be darker than expected, and it’s haunting to listen to it while a war rages on in Ukraine, a war started by a false king handed a false crown by people who found it more convenient than the alternatives. Rarely music captures so much of the zeitgeist with so much prescience and with so few words.
For more KENSHIRO+, visit kenshiroplus.bandcamp.com
