Album Review: Cold Specks Shows Love Is A Fool’s Paradise Worth Living In
Cold Specks’ Fool’s Paradise is the epitome of every moment I decided to get in my feelings.
When you are falling love, it is hard not to live in your heart because relationships, by definition, ask us to go there. Fool’s Paradise reveals the heart as both a kingdom and court for jesters, but shows that love and how we use it to relate to the world is more vast than defined.
Cold Specks, real name Ladan Hussein, is proud of her Somali roots, and uses Fool’s Paradise as an exploration of the nation and culture’s tragic history. The Somali Civil War killed many lives, and changes the course of the many that lived. One of those people was Hussein’s father, who helped form a famous, Somali band called, Iftin. To go from an artist’s life to a refugee is a giant, jagged, and vicious pill to swallow. When life changes your course beyond your will, it can lead to incomprehensible pain and a feeling as if your personal history as an individual has been divided between life before trauma and life after. Songs like, “Two Worlds”, “Rupture”, and “Exile” feel like you have opened a rhythmic version of the Book of Job. In it, life is torn to supernatural detail, but resilience is risen in equal proportion. These songs along with “Ancient Habits” and “New Moon” feel more than “electro-pop”; they feel like “electro-myths”. Cold Specks arranges her music as if they were instrumentals born and waved in a celestial river. She truly captures the spiritualism of Somali culture by creating music that speaks to Millennial stylings for synth-wave, and matches them with humanity’s attraction to legends.
The irony of humanity’s love for myths is that we admire heroes, but could not stand to live their suffering. We love Joan of Arc, but we would NEVER want to start a war on voices in our head and then burn for it. We admire Achilles, but God FORBID an arrow shot our achilles heel and killed us. Legends are born from how we survive the worst of humanity to become and embodiment of its best, and Fool’s Paradise is the sound and story of everyday people becoming legends by having to fins a new home, identity, and opportunity for self-love. Cold Specks radiates this journey with vocals that flower over her rivered synths as if they blossom upon their watered sonics. In the same way she wishes to ignite meditation upon listeners, she ignites it within herself by creating one of the most mindful albums of the year. For More Information On Cold Specks And. To Buy Fool’s Paradise On September 22 Click Here.
