I once had a conversation with Aleksandar Gillian, who records spectral indie folk under his chapovski alias, about genre fusion. He expressed mild cynicism; he recommended Massive Attack. I remember this interaction as I listen to ‘the sun-kissed wonder of broken panes of glass’, a highlight from chapovski’s recent midnight runway EP and a song that quietly exposes its creator for his capacity to work disparate strains of rock music into new, singular forms.

chapovski is immediately distinctive for that voice: an expressionless, vaguely atonal drawl that brings one particular murder balladeer to mind. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, but takes on a pleasantly yearning quality on ‘sun-kissed wonder’. In any case, the Nick Cave similarities end there: chapovski’s floating arrangement bears no resemblance to Cave’s grounded blues. Acoustic downstrokes ring out into space, resemblant of the delicate chamber folk of Jessica Pratt. Tendrils of electric guitar pierce through the mix in a way that curiously reminds me of Thursday-era the Weeknd. And the chorus is pure shoegaze, bolstered by fuzzy distortion and soaring like Parannoul. Like Pratt and Parannoul (in fact a little like the Weeknd too), chapovski filters influences from the 70s and 90s through an intuitive, contemporary lens. Crucially, though, the homages that exist in chapovski’s music feel earnest and rarely posturing.

Broken glass is an emotional sight, and the act of glass breaking is jarringly intense. It is a phenomenon of contradictory motion. Glass shatters instantly, fracturing at nearly 5000km/h, but eventually comes to rest in absolute stillness. Changes in its displacement are violent but linear. Yet the sunlight that actually passes through the glass is refracted, subject to minute, perpetual curvature. I’m not surprised chapovski finds genuine wonder in broken glass, and there are a few moments on ‘sun-kissed wonder’ that feel charged with the same intensity as the material itself. “Maybe heaven will break for me,” he sings into the vast atmosphere, “maybe I’ll dance with colours?” The sound is perfectly still – words dissipating into the thin air of the instrumental – but the words themselves are filled with movement and light. They hint at vivacity and energy but are tempered by their narrator’s audible fatigue. Immediately after, the hope evaporates: “Or lose this heart / die amidst the clutter”. These four lines are a microcosm of chapovski’s music, which oscillates between transcendence and bleak resolve, and ‘sun-kissed wonder’ is his most captivating statement yet.

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Sam Gollings

3 March 2024