Recorded and self-produced in their Berlin apartment, The KVB‘S 2018 album, Only Now Forever, is a neat mixture of contrasts. It is melancholic, yet ebullient. Somber, yet hopeful. Moody, yet joyful. It’s an honest look at modern living and a warning against its trappings. The title of the album itself is a suggestion of presence. We only have now, this moment, forever. The past never existed. The future never will. We can embrace this divine truth or we can stay buried in a past long gone or worry about a future that doesn’t yet exist – and will be completely different from what we expect when it does arrive…in the now.
Opening single, “Above Us,” is a shadowed electro-pop tune with definite Berlin krautrock influences to its beats and bass as Kat Day and Nicholas Wood sing about rising above the drudgery of modern life. “On My Skin” is a beautiful track with haunting synths by Day and playful ghost-like guitar work by Wood as he sings a tale of a relationship that’s come to an end for reasons unknown to him.
The title track opens like a lost early 1980’s film score that backs a race on some sort of futuristic motorcycle. Day’s synth bass and beats are like android heartbeats. “And the past has all been done. The circle comes ’round again. All I fear will go away. It’s only now just begun,” Wood sings. Fear, like all things, is impermanent (if we allow it to be), and The KVB encourage us to step off the treadmill of fear and move forward under our own power. I’m sure “Afterglow” has been remixed and spun in multiple Berlin industrial / dance clubs by now because it evokes images of Replicants seducing humans and vice-versa.
“With everything, there comes a price,” Wood sings at the beginning of “Violet Noon,” which the band describes on their Bandcamp page as “a romantic ode to the apocalypse.” I can’t describe it any better than that. Day’s breathy vocals on “Into Life” will make your pulse quicken and your spine shiver. “Live in Fiction” is another warning from them. “Everything in the world has changed. I cannot find the truth,” Wood sings. People have embraced fiction over truths that upset their comfortable realities, even when those truths would improve their lives and the lives of those around them.
“Tides” is appropriately named because Day’s synth swell and ebb like the tide, almost catching you off-guard now and then with their sudden burst of energy. “No Shelter” slinks into the room like a femme fatale walking into a detective’s office in a 1950’s dime novel. The album ends with the upbeat “Cerulean,” which has Day laying down a wicked synth-bass groove and her backing vocals feeling like a cool mist as Wood’s feel like a warm canyon wall echo.
Only Now Forever encourages us to accept truth and embrace the present. It’s themes resonate even more in 2020 than they did two years ago.
Keep your mind open.
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