Kajo
On What It Means To Be Human In Cold Places
By Lulu Moore
Kajo – the California-based artist, producer, songwriter, and instrumentalist –embodies the mindful spirit that self-awareness is the key ingredient to understanding life’s chaotic recipe. Bending genres with an alt-pop twist, Kajo uses sincere lyricism, captivating riffs, and soft synths to convey universal truths about what it means to be human.
Cold Places, Kajo's first album released under Logic’s Def Jam sublabel, Bobby Boy Records, dropped on February 25th. The album features eighteen existential yet truly comforting tracks that serenade the early cycles of life. Accordingly, the number 18 symbolizes Kajo’s youth: “everyone’s youth.”
The introductory track, “Cold Open,” gently wakes you up from a dazed slumber, delicately establishing the album’s introspective tone. Kajo’s smooth vocals hug his melancholic lyrics in “Rem Koolhaus,” as he shares how “everyone’s depressed” but imparts warm wisdom, noting: “the difference is who gets dressed.”
Once Kajo opens the doors to the beautiful complexities of life, he takes us to his adolescence in “My Father’s Garage.” The 28-year-old artist shares how he grew up in Salinas, “a city in California that had a high crime and death rate for youth.” The song’s exciting house beat embodies the charged eagerness of adolescence; it represents music as “a way for us to keep safe after school and on the weekends.” Whether the tracks pump you up or validate your lows: the album speaks to the human condition.
“In a way, Cold Places is about death––the state of suspended animation. If you study remains… they will tell you about the past. There is no way to confirm [life’s] absolute truths. We all just kind of make our own conclusions. We derive from things that are left to us.” The album is a “playlist I’m sending to my former self,” representing how “everything will be okay in spite of all of the coldness in the world–the disappointments, the rejections, depression, anxiety…it will all work out.”
Kajo studied physical anthropology at UCLA and his education shines in one of his later tracks, “Ötzi.” The title references a mummy, discovered in 1991 by hikers in the Alps, frozen for 5,300 years. The video tracks the mummy’s journey, beginning with the man’s death. Kajo’s self-produced music video highlights those who “didn’t feel like they had command of their destination.” While Ötzi’s death represents a “sacrificial thing,” the video embodies a sense of joyful redemption. The story speaks to those who “didn’t feel like they had command of their destination.”
Kajo ties this larger theme of sacrifice to the music industry, remarking how “there are ritualistic things that every industry does” and you catch yourself thinking, “Oh man, why did they have to do it this way.” But in an effort to evolve “you have to grin and bear and make the sacrifices” to ultimately understand what it “means to be human.” According to Kajo, being human is to “laugh and to cry” and “to be important in somebody’s eyes.”
Kajo incorporates classical music in “Polonoise”, techno-pop in “Babylon”, some shoegaze in “Hoodie/Clyde’s Spaghetti”, and sprinkles drum and bass throughout. Starting his music career as a producer first, Kajo “got to be a fly on the wall,” and his extensive knowledge and committed interest in music radiates through his multi-genre project. While Kajo’s varied range seems limitless, he notes that “your best co-producer in everything is your limitations” because scarcity “forces you to be creative and resourceful.”
Limits seem to drive Kajo’s unique sound and holistic range. Scarcity propels his propensity to study the past and grounds his belief that “Nothing is really new under the sun––everything has a lineage.” The artist challenges himself to explore the past so that he can pioneer new ways to communicate core lyrical messages and establish his own unique sound. “That’s the most rewarding part.” Kajo generativity recognizes “audiences who haven’t heard certain genres before” and uses his contemporary touch to reintroduce them to these forgotten sounds.
Overall, the Cold Places’ experimental nature exemplifies Kajo’s valuable advice. “Flounder and hopefully succeed.” And “don't let great get in the way of good.” Humanity only thrives through failure because “the more failure you get out of the way, the closer you are to success.”