Khonnor
Lost Pets

So young and so full of talent, Connor Christian Kirby-Long, a.k.a. Khonnor, is undoubtedly one of the most interesting new faces in the electronic scene. Born on July 24, 1986, he has one album to his credit, the magnificent “Handwriting” (released by Type Records in 2004), and three EPs (two under the Monotonik label), the recently released “Burning Palace,” “Live From Saint Johnsbury, Vermont” (which includes the splendid “Crapstone” featured again in the album), and this wonderful “Lost Pets” from 2003 (when he was just 17).

There are six tracks on the EP, with a total duration of just a quarter of an hour, but what you find inside is amazing. Among the bleeps, glitches, delays, radio interference, and various experimentalism, sinusoidal, evocative melodies full of poetry, pathos, and melancholy emerge. “Rooms” reminds me of “Untitled #3” by Sigur Rós, and “Cantelopps” evokes “Goon Gumpas” by Aphex Twin. The sixth and final track is “I Was Everything You Wanted Until I Quit”, also later appearing in “Handwriting.”

Now it would be reductive to say that Mr. Kirby-Long is merely a hybrid of the aforementioned, but perhaps it manages to render a suggestive, and only partially true, idea to those reading this review of who we have before us: an artist with the sensitivity and emotional depth of the Icelanders and the insatiable urge to experiment of the renowned Richard D. James, combined with an extraordinary and personal compositional ability. His songs are the most honest and sublime you can find in today's indietronica scene, of a pure beauty like childlike innocence.

Now close your eyes, free your mind, and let your imagination, to the notes of “Lost Pets”, do the rest.