“Glass" by Kye Kye, Saturday, December 18, 2021

The fourth track on Kye Kye's sophomore record, Fantasize, "Glass" continues to build the atmosphere on this Chad Howat-produced record. Back in 2014, there was still hope that Kye Kye could be the next big Christian band. Their 2011 debut, Young Love landed them a feature interview in Relevant Magazine and their follow up was well-reviewed in several Christian publications, including CCM Magazine. The band's story was fascinating for the Christian market. Siblings Tim and Olga  Yagolnikov grew up in a conservative Russian churches in Estonia before moving to the United States. In the Relevant article, Tim explains that the siblings' religious upbringing wasn't "really grace-centered, it’s really kind of more legalistic." Tim explains that their religious culture was "not for salvation, it’s for blessing or right-standing with God."

TO HOLD ONTO AN IMAGE OF SHADOWS YOU REMEMBER. According to my Apple Music's "Replay '21" playlist, the remix for Kye Kye's "Glass" was the 42nd most played song in my library this year. And while the remix is pretty great, the instrumentals and atmosphere of the original are all the more beautiful, particularly the brass section between the chorus and the bridge. Rather than being Paper Route's Chad Howat, this song sounds like it was produced by Aaron Marsh. Like most of Kye Kye's songs, "Glass" is opaque in meaning. The lyrics play around with the dichotomies between cleanliness and impurity, clarity and opaqueness, and faith and doubt. Earlier this year, Kye Kye released their third record, Arya. Listeners noticed a departure in the band's positive lyrics and the now just-sibling duo's darker tones. In a question and answer session for the new album on the Kye Kye's Instagram, the band explained that their new album was inspired by "the gift of awareness, life, death, friendship, trust, love, and hate." When the band was asked about their Christian music background, they replied: "Our music was written for everyone--living the creative life [--] that's all." This response is quite different from the Relevant article. 

DESIRE, HIT ME SO SWEET. The cold winter sun peaking between the apartment buildings in the late afternoon is the image that comes to mind whenever I hear Kye Kye's first record and its remix companion EP. Moments on Fantasize bring back that feeling of listening to band's full album for the first time in the late fall to early winter of 2013. Kye Kye's music was an intangible spiritual experience bridging the end of the Sabbath, sunset on Saturday night, to the apartment gym near my house. The tones of Kye Kye's synth and slight guitar on songs like "Walking This," "Knowing This," "Seasons," "I Already See It," and "Glass" remind me of sunset, of the fading blue around the orange-red saturated sky. There's a feeling of cold atmosphere surrounding me, but a warm center. Subconsciously I would equate that with the Christian experience: the called and the chosen sent out into a darkening, cold world, but the love of Christ in our hearts. Kye Kye was cool, ambiguously Christian music, and I was trying to be a cool, ambiguously Christian "missionary." Kye Kye went MIA after 2014, which coincidently was the year that I burned out. Kye Kye's 2021 album doesn't have the same feeling I described. It's cold and bitter. 


Fantasize Remixes version:

Featured in a short film advertising for the Lexus CT Hybrid:






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