You wouldn’t write about Intermood, specifically their new single ‘Hypnagogic’, for the same reasons you would usually write about a song. I only write when I feel compelled to, when I listen to something and a sentence spills out, fully formed, and then I need to follow the train of thought to its logical conclusion. I started writing about music during the pandemic simply because I was listening to new things all the time, good and bad, and keeping my thoughts to myself about everything I was hearing became frustrating after a while.

Beyond a simple description of the song – a nine-minute suite of muted disco, powered by a showstopping, restless flute lead – I don’t come away from ‘Hypnagogic’ with a bounty of novel things to say. The track sort of speaks for itself; writing about it doesn’t come with the purpose of subtly teasing out what exactly makes it special. On the contrary: it’s hard to imagine needing to convince someone this song is the shit. I would challenge anyone to take out ten minutes out of their day to listen to ‘Hypnagogic’ and not come away at least a little captivated by this understated Naarm four-piece.

The effortless motion of ‘Hypnagogic’ faintly obscures the band’s technical prowess. They lean into their jazz sensibilities, providing space for meandering, extended improvisational stanzas, but always slot back into groove seamlessly. And it’s not just the rhythm section working in tandem: the track’s primary motif comes from a doubled, surprisingly percussive lead melody, flute and guitar moving in lockstep. The geographic lineage of their funk is hard to pin down, too. The touches of African hand percussion and the bright, clean tone of the lead guitar recall rhumba; at the same time you can hear the Japanese-Brazilian fusion of Takanaka in the track’s curious harmonies and spritely dynamics. And yet once you’re five minutes in, you’ll kick yourself for thinking Intermood are shooting for anything other than pure Balearic bliss.

Does all that matter, though? Not really. ‘Hypnagogic’ doesn’t beg to be interrogated, even though I have tried to do so for the sake of cranking a few more words out. Ultimately, writing about Intermood isn’t so much to explore how, or why, their latest single is excellent, as would be conventional – it’s really just to announce that it is. It’s to devote a little bit of time and attention to a song that might not otherwise get it, so lived-in would it sound in any setting. In a way, the most impressive thing about ‘Hypnagogic’ is how easily it could be the one that got away, the track you try in vain to Shazam after-the-fact because you were distracted by how good it felt when it was on.

80

Sam Gollings

28 November 2024