CÆKE

Gone are the sprawling ensemble works. The sound of CÆKE is minimalist, spacious and mellow. Piano, drum machines and vintage synths assemble a curious DIY space for Hess’ voice to wander… pensive and unhurried, with strange, eccentric poetry.

 

In honest Hess-ian fashion, the maturity of the sound is offset by a tendency for the childish, the curious… a subversive lightheartedness, which traces back to Hess’ early works. Take the chorus to ‘I Love My Life… Again and Again’, laid above an innocuous drum machine beat: “I Love My Life/I Fuck My Wife/Again and Again”.

 

The ironies and pleasantries flow into a larger mood of mellow existentialism, with which Hess greets the oncoming seriousness of life as a father. Much has happened since Hess’ began the project in the early 00’s. CÆKE represents a return to the basics, but the basics have changed. Life has changed. The world has changed.

CÆKE is Hess finding the melody of a new life. One that makes room for both seriousness and carefreeness, the introspective and the outward, the living room and the dancefloor.