On his debut EP, TRISTÁN!'s Bedroom Pop is Infinite

I was rather stunned to discover that this cheekily titled “Music EP” which came out this past April is TRISTÁN!’s first collection of songs. At 19, he’s the youngest member of Rusia-IDK, an avant-garde collective-slash-label-thing out of Madrid (which I will definitely be keeping an eye on). Apart from this release and a smattering of excellent singles and collaborations, there’s really barely anything about him online. There is this wonderful quote from a Dazed Magazine piece: “I try a lot of things and then normally I ask my friends to help me make the final song. The only thing that I’m good at is just knowing what I like and what I don’t.” A young man of confident taste. Well, a subscriber to Rick Rubinism would say that’s all that matters. So we’ll let him speak with his music.

The EP is bookended by two gorgeous, sparing ballads. In between are glittering towers of different architectural styles, protruding from a consistent base of delicate, swirling electronic soundscapes. “OPPENHEIMER,” for example, is a slice of washed out psych rap that would function perfectly as an A$AP Rocky or Travis Scott interlude. “Pretty Girl” is a PC-Music-esque banger. “CELL” is a reverby lullaby with labelmate rusowsky.

“Pinky Ring” is the standout, and immediately one of my favorite songs of this year. The chipmunked duet traded between TRISTÁN! and Daniela Lalita feels touching and innocent. The lyrics lay bare two souls coming to a shared acceptance of heartbreak. The world built from the production feels at once cosmic and private, like the two are gazing at projected constellations on a bedroom ceiling. It’s a beautiful, beautiful song.

For whatever this is worth: I’m intensely struck by this type of electronic music sometimes, the kind that is able to sound so human, so playful, and also take a back seat sometimes to acoustic elements. Certainly that isn’t a novel thought, but really, this stuff is still relatively new, and not everyone is very good at that! But certainly for an artist born post-2000, picking up a DAW must be like picking up a guitar. There are just so many sounds to be made now. And for my part, I really appreciate this kind of a full embrace of all the electronic wizardry currently available to us without getting lost in the sauce of it. The electronic medium doesn’t have to be the message anymore.

In other words, when God sings with all his creations, will computers not be part of the chorus?