Elijah Kessler shares BENZO

ELIJAH KESSLER
SHARES 'BENZO'
TAKEN FROM HIS UPCOMING DEBUT ALBUM 'LIGHTSPEED', OUT 14TH APRIL ON COMPANY

CHECK IT OUT HERE  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j54K4cMEmKg

Credit: Meredith Truax

April 14th will see the release of Elijah Kessler's debut LP on Company Records, an album called LIGHTSPEED. The sessions on the album began when Elijah was a teenager, after one of his early Soundcloud experiments was discovered by Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi and immediately reached out to see if Elijah would be interested in working together.

"Elijah’s voice and taste caught my attention immediately and I knew I wanted to make an album together," says Bear. "We recorded this album in Oakland at my studio within multiple sessions over the course of 4 years. His ability to channel multiple genres at once is something I’m constantly baffled and motivated by."

That initial exchange between Bear and a teenaged Elijah would turn out to be the beginning of a collaboration that would unfold over the course of the next 5 years. During that time, Elijah graduated high school and moved to Miami for college. His day-to-day life at this time was largely occupied by classes, relationships, soccer, video games, and anime. But between college semesters, Elijah would make trips to meet up and work with Bear in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, or New York. On each of these respective trips, Elijah found himself feeling a new spark of inspiration, as the cities themselves unlocked his sense of wide eyed imagination. During these sessions, Elijah’s constant practice would make itself evident, as his knack for improvisationally writing hooks in the studio became abundantly clear. Along the way, several other producers became involved in the project, including Nosaj Thing and Elijah’s early collaborator Instupendo.

The album was announced with the single "ZEISS", which featured Toro y Moi and was co-produced by Nosaj Thing, and the track made an immediate impact, catching the attention of BTS leader RM and racking up over 100,000 streams in its first week. Today Kessler is back to share a final single from the LP entitled "BENZO", alongside it's accompanying video.

"With this one I wanted to portray the emptiness one can feel and display while dealing with depression," Kessler explains. "I think the performance was so easy for me bevause i have been working 70+ hour weeks for the last three months and I was pretty realistically empty and work out myself. The doctor scenes are just there to represent how our doctors kind of just prescribe drugs to everyone to fix problems. at first it was more comical, but we decided to keep in the serious parts to better echo the theme of the video."

Track Listing
1. BENZO
2. DOLLA
3. ZEISS (ft. Toro y Moi)
4. RED WINE 2
5. VIDEO GAME LOVER
6. SINGING AND DRINKING
7. PASTEL
8. PLANE TICKET
9. LIGHTSPEEDInstagram | Twitter