OUT NOW - ‘maybe not tomorrow’ by santpoort
"The urgency of global climate change" and humanity's ignorance towards this topic is the fuel behind the formation of Maybe Not Tomorrow, Santpoort's newest full-length album, out now with indie label Friends of Friends. Lush and dense in electronic production, Santpoort not only provides vocals throughout the project, but also enlists some friends for the occasion.
While the instrumental layers and organic samples might sound relaxing and inviting, the message is quite urgent and strongly worded. "We really don’t have much time in this world to personally improve it," Santpoort says. "I have reconsidered my lifestyle, that of a wandering stone in the world - and have been (up)cycling objects and food in my everyday life. Like using the inside of a washing machine as a lamp, or growing the most food we can. I go dumpster diving once or twice a week to rescue perfectly fine food and I started a vegetable garden in my backyard in the middle of a gigantic city."
This album is a garden in the concrete. A seed of hope (urgency, yes, but hope) beneath the stone. Forward thinking and forever unique, Santpoort's album goes from recording the sound of a moving escalator at a shopping mall to the rhythm of a car wiper, showing a rainy and murky world outside. Think toy pianos, wind chimes, glasses full of water, vases full of plants, the daily sounds of a coffee marker, taps of a lantern, washer beeps, the peel of a banana. Nothing is off limits and everything feels natural and curious within Santpoort's world.
"Being more mature and having darker undertones," Santpoort explains, "[this album] still touches the soft hue sentiment of being inside the womb of mother nature. It’s a bright seedling growing out of a gray tile in a universe full of growing skyscrapers."
The album is a mixture of The Flaming Lips and Spongebob and Beck and Baths. It's playful, curious, upbeat, jazzy, fast-paced, forward-thinking, stuck in slumberland, worried about the future. It's wearing a tote bag and gathering a bag of water. It's going to the sea just to enhance the dream. The album has one particular line that stands out as the definitive (visual and sonic) world of Santpoort:
"Feels like I'm walking on the moon
inside of a balloon"
Like wandering inside of a coloring book, Santpoort's newest album dives deeper into his world-building discography, with five albums and just as many EPs. Packed with a strong message and just as strong songs (that work together as a cohesive playthrough as well as standalone singles), Maybe Not Tomorrow is full of tenderness as well as warning of things to come.
"The longer we spend time out of nature," Santpoort says, in closing, "the more everything becomes the same. Are we all growing into teal statues of stone, grown over by moss? Or are we already stuck in a rockfall that we can’t overcome? After I die, I want my remains to be used for a new tree to grow."
Visit the plant store. Go to the park. Press play and feel the greenery around you begin to blossom and bloom.