Blending skittering, sequenced percussion with jazzy chords and wonderfully bleary vocals, Kashika Kollaikal’s debut album as Flung, 2020’s Shaky But My Hair Is Grown, struck a psychedelic balance between the Books and Person Pitch-era Panda Bear. A split release from DIY labels Citrus City and Topshelf, it was a strong experimental pop record that flew under the radar. Since then, Kollaikal has kept busy, associating herself with a community of artists subverting the familiar indie pop tropes. She’s produced an album from fellow avant-pop up-and-comer Blue Toed, collaborated with percussionist Gabe Stout in the duo Honey Oat, and shared stages with Florist and Time Wharp. The 12 songs on Flung’s new record, Apricot Angel, reflect this restless creative energy. Fusing polyrhythmic arrangements and lyrics that grapple with themes of gender identity and placelessness, Flung further develops the distinctive sound that made Shaky But My Hair Is Grown approachable yet gripping.
The most immediately striking element of Apricot Angel is its ornate instrumentation. Kollaikal is a producer whose output feels equally suited for hippy communes and art school dance parties. On “Tress Thing,” featherweight chords drift over a clattering groove until the song bursts into a climax of cascading synth leads. The title track alternates between burbling lows and a wonky hook that calls to mind sentient robots trying to harmonize a number from a Broadway musical. “Froth” uses galloping drums to lay the framework for muted vocal samples, helping the song land in a universe inhabited by like-minded genre-benders Body Meat and draag me. Kollaikal’s work has never been predictable, but Apricot Angel is especially hard to pin down. With unplaceable tonalities and rapidly shifting structures, the tracks rarely stay in one place for long.
On Shaky But My Hair Is Grown, which came to life over three uncomfortable weeks at the start of the pandemic, inspiration from Black philosophers like Fred Moten and Nathaniel Mackey helped provide a wider sociopolitical context for the music. The tone of Apricot Angel is more intimate, as Kollaikal opens up about increasingly personal subject matter. The interplay between the vulnerable lyrics and the boisterous musical textures is tethered to Kollaikal’s experience as a queer person. These senses of both acceptance and empowerment are especially palpable on the propulsive, heady “Hands and a Carpet.” “Fluttering through/Sparkly things when you’re just not healing,” she sings in a descending melody. Due to the heavy processing that underlines Flung’s unique mixing style, you can’t always decipher the words, but her singular vocal patterns shine through even the most oblique moments.
Flung’s music is marked by a surreality that gives it a shimmering, almost mystical energy. Kollaikal’s writing can be vague, but contrasted with her frantic, maximalist composition style it can also be alluring. “We were early in the day, you were water gorgeous/Lay low, lay low, they got a new orbit, oh they got a new orbit,” she sings on “Ebb,” over hypnagogic synths and shuffling drums. The self-exploration that courses through Apricot Angel is not always easy to parse, and occasionally that’s the point. “That’s part of, for me, having a solo project: It is just so personal, and so much an extension of my life,” Kollaikal recently told Oakland’s Lower Grand Radio, when asked how her Bay Area home shaped this record. Apricot Angel flaunts both introspection and pride, a dichotomy that places Flung’s music in its own eclectic realm.
