pax
Pax world; press photo courtesy of the artist.
Providing the following foreword of “for ms. stieb༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽”; the elusive artist known as pax, aka pictochat, re-emerges with the new single “vivian” that brings the most melancholic post-winter depression hues mixed with holistic spring lo-fi undertones. The world of pictochat is one that imagines a world in pictures, where stylistic considerations are observed and illustrated like mercurial brush-strokes that are as ever shifting like our own awkward relationships with our own moods and mental states. The closing of “vivian” hears the entire track being slowed & stripped down to a kind of slow sailing rhythm cut where half-opened/heavy eye-lid chords steer the way to new states of feeling.
The artist provided with us the following exclusive insights into the new single & more:
So I’ve had the intention to make this song for the longest time now, but I was super unsure of myself. I came up with the first draft of it a couple months ago but I ended up scrapping it because I was so unsure about writing a song about someone. I don’t know, the idea of writing a song about someone that you’re crushing on was so beyond me. To me, it was like, “why am I making this song, it’s pointless, it’s just going to bum me out later”. That’s just the mindset I had at the time [laughs].
But the dude J’Von, whom I met through the internet recently, released this joint, Seattle Girl a little over a month ago and wrote something like, love is war, love is perpetual, and we all dedicate songs to people who will perhaps never listen to them. I thought it’d be cool to make something that speaks to that feeling as a creator with a muse amiss.
After reading that and listening to the song, I was like, “word”. The song and whole concept behind it was super interesting to me, and I ended up using that as the basis and motivation for me to finish the song. I kinda went from thinking, “should I even write this song? Is it going to reach the person I’m writing it for?” and just saying to myself, yo, I don’t care if it does or not. I just need to get this song off my chest, [laughs]. It ended up being a song I’d never done anything like before and probably the most personal song I’ve ever made. It was the first time I had played guitar/bass on a track in like five years and I feel like it was the perfect embodiment of how I was feeling.
