13 December 2022 - 0 Comments

"Mells is able to sidestep a lot of new artist pitfalls in this with refreshing and unusual levels of self-awareness. unlike the work of most emerging artists, there are no structural motifs in this that feel unearned or dishonest."

"It somehow feels like both a dead-serious personal exorcism and an elaborate joke on the entire history of music (...) there are two or three moments that are so cathartic they’d vaporize Aristotle in an instant if he was alive to hear them."

Wellington, New Zealand based songwriter and producer Raiden Freeman (real name Jack Mells) has released his latest body of work Within The Speed Limit Of Love on Bandcamp and all good streaming services. This follows the previous week's release of singles Megatron (featuring Annabel Lee) and S.O.T.S. (featuring Skymning & Welcomer). In the coming week there will be physical releases distributed through the Bandcamp page including MiniDiscs and two different cassette tape editions: the standard edition and the extremely limited 90 minute "SoundCloud Cut" of the album which features cut material and a unique sequencing familiar to listeners that Mells supplied with the private listening link during the album's creation.

This 16 track song cycle is a personal excoriation and self-interrogation through popular genres with a low-fi and sonic arts oriented edge. The pacing, sounds and tone switch from one track to the next, intended to throw the listener into Mells's perspective as someone on the Autism spectrum, where sense is made through forced reconciliation of disparate facts and abstractions. The "speed limit of love" is an idea that Mells dwelled on for months, representing the tenets formed at the base of the limits of human perception and instinct. In the grunge rock song The Life Of Oharu, Mells laments "I've got my own space and time, these people can't prioritise their a prioris," drawing comparison between himself and the tragic zen figure protagonist of the titular film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Cinematic parallels in a general sense inform the feelings of pacing and "cutting" of different ideas on this record.

Straddling the lines of emo pop, low-fi rock, Soundcloud trap, ambient soundscape, freak folk, New Jack Swing soul and even film trailer music, if there's any singular way to describe Mells as a musical artist it's simply as just another songwriter. All of these songs at the core are just tunes he dreamt up and hummed as a voice memo, and developed later into fuller forms in his bedroom. While playing most of the instruments on the record and handling the mixing and production himself, this album is a milestone for Raiden Freeman in being the first record where significant contributions from other people were made. Among the song's feature list are friends like Skymning, Welcomer, Mosese The Band and Cryer. Mells also found a collaborator in one of his favourite local artists Annabel Lee, and in a serendipitous online friendship with NYC-based photographer Bao Ngo (who shot the cover of Mitski's Be The Cowboy). Significant instrumental contributions were also made by Wellington-based keyboard player Hector McLachlan (Revulva, Rachel Andie). These collaborations serve to simultaneously diversify the sound even more and reign in some of Mells's more chaotic tendencies.

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