Lying on the room’s floor, with headphones at the perfect volume to enter a trance, Mezzanine is playing. I close my eyes and imagine a galaxy around me; Cassius Select aka Lavurn’s silky voice seduces, captures, and keeps you there, in silence, listening. That voice has been hidden for three years jumping between Toronto, Hong Kong, and Berlin, where he has been working tirelessly to create what will be his debut album under his own name, (pre-order here) alongside SUMAC founders DJ Plead and T. Morimoto. Take a look!
The Toronto singer ventures into this new project under the name Lavurn. It sounds as familiar as extraterrestrial. Just like the accompanying visuals created by LA-based artist 011668, part of the multimedia performance collective i8i. Speaking of the video, the artist says: “I have just received an anonymous zip titled Lavurn from User-cassius_1 (not sure if Lavurn is an acronym or the name of the intended recipient). The contents of the file include a series of codes, coordinates, and diagrams detailing the inner architecture of all European Institutions currently in possession of contested artefacts. Run application “Lavurn” to be integrated into the web browser. Use highly elastic astral gaussian splatting to locate and return the stolen artefacts.”
Scenes of aimless cars, computers reminiscent of Code Lyoko, bearing a conspicuous message: Wake up, Lavurn. I deduce, hence, that this song serves as the catalyst for a romantic breakup. He describes it as embodying an attitude of, hey, I’m going to focus on myself and grow, all while deeply longing for someone’s return (albeit for reasons that are not entirely right).
Obviously, we’ll keep an eye out in anticipation of discovering the album, set to release in February 2024, that awaits us, although this single already hints that it will navigate between R&B melodies and minimalist electronic productions. A perfect combo that “wants to be listenable, so it can create emotions,” as commented by Cassius Select himself.