Feature: Hiatus Kaiyote – Love Heart Cheat Code
Hiatus Kaiyote emphasises sensing rather than knowing on their latest release Love Heart Cheat Code; a type of trust that can only be brought through creative harmony and hours of studio sessions.
The result is a wide-eyed, cohesive, yet relaxed body of work that reflects a deeper understanding of themselves and the music they wish to share with the world around them.
On the album, the band’s direction is not always attained directly; less deliberate and more via deliberation and drift: in jam sessions that last late into the night and early mornings. The album also features other Melbourne-based musicians like Taylor “Chip” Crawford, who played an instrument of his own invention called the frello; guitarist Tom Martin; and flautist Nikodimos; and the unprecedented addition of a very important creative force: Mario Caldato, whose work with the Beastie Boys and Seu Jorge is the stuff of legends.
Hiatus Kaiyote has always spoken on their albums as microcosms, a complete ecosystem.
On Love Heart Cheat Code, the band envisioned a strong visual world to coincide with the music, working with Sri Lanken-born, Toronto-based multimedia artist Rajni Perera, using one of her paintings as the artwork for the album.
Illustrator Chloe Biocca and Grey Ghost then collaborated with the band to create visual symbols and associated artifacts for each of the tracks on the project to be paired alongside Rajni’s painting.
The artifacts morphed into real products, custom jewellery, and edible goods, ranging from the inspired to the haunted and utterly random.
Eventually, this led the band to conceive an entirely imagined place, a Love Heart Cheat Code supermarket, with the band as its employees who create these products, market them, stack the shelves, clean the aisles, etc.
In the banality of creating art into a “product” for the modern world, the band finds solace in each item (or song) as they are packed with transcendent and resplendent musical magic.
Love Heart Cheat Code the latest release from Hiatus Kaiyote is available to stream now via Brainfeeder / Ninja Tune.