C41 Magazine is delighted to premiere the stunning new video for LOVE from Kody Chambers, Amsterdam-based trumpet player and composer. His debut instrumental EP Solar Plexus consists of six compositions, each track a sonic meditation on a specific experience, life-theme or inner feeling. The sound of Solar Plexus is visceral and poetic in nature. Genre-wise, Kody draws from his roots in jazz and soul music, and sews them into his electronic and experimental approach towards sonic storytelling.

C41: How did the song Love come about? What inspired that track?

Kody Chambers: I was asked by Clive Grinyer, a service designer, to participate in a design project he was leading in collaboration with the Fetzer Institute called “Project Love.” As part of the project, he commissioned a group of designers to create various artefacts that could promote love between people—including a piece of music. My track LOVE is inspired by the idea that a kind word and social connection can have a transformative effect on someone during their time of need. In the beginning of the song, we find ourselves trapped in the middle of a troubled and chaotic mind, with incoherent chatter and dissonant noise. Through the help of a kind word from a stranger—symbolised by the trumpet—we are able to break through this noise and re-emerge into the world around us. As the only composer to participate in the project, I felt the need to justify music as a unique tool for design. Unlike the design of a physical object, such as a chair or a doorbell, music exists in the realm of the symbolic and the intangible. Instead of designing for space, the musician designs for time. Because of its emotive and temporal nature, I felt music would be a particularly useful tool when designing to promote love. Like music, love exists as an experience that morphs over time inside of the person experiencing it.

C41: What did your creative process to produce the video look like?

Luuk Walschot: When I first heard the track, it immediately intrigued me. I saw it as a challenge to create a music video that would support an instrumental piece. Lyrics in the form of vocals usually give music videos structure, so this required a more abstract approach. It was a playful process to come up with visuals that tell a story of feeling out of sync and lonely, and then finding a way out to stand strong again. My starting point was in darkness, with Kody visibly “disconnected” from his instrument. As the track progresses, he gradually moves closer to the light—and towards the trumpet. While in the opening shot of the video Kody appears very small, at the end he is seen towering like a giant. These visual opposites tell a story without needing any words.

C41: Environments, both natural and built, feel like characters in the video. What roles do they play in shaping the story?

LW: I was eager to work with natural elements that are not only visually interesting but also have a highly surreal effect. In certain moments, the sounds in the track may evoke negative associations with a bad trip after a night out. But shortly after, they begin to also suggest the carefree feeling of a sunny day in the park. I found the contrast between these two interpretations fascinating and wanted to bring that to life visually.

C41: ⁠As a Toronto-raised artist, how has your background played a role in shaping your sound and production?

KC: A lot of music coming out of Toronto sounds dark and moody. I think that approach to production really rubbed off on me, but I’ve re-contextualized it from an R&B/Hip Hop setting into a Jazz/Ambient setting on this project. I love playing with murkiness and blending sounds together using reverbs, delays, and filters, so that you can’t really tell where one instrument starts and the other stops (or if you’re even hearing an instrument at all). I also find that creating a darker and more muted background really helps the trumpet (which is in the same register as the human voice) pop out more in contrast.

C41: ⁠How are you going to present this new EP?

KC: My upcoming EP, Solar Plexus, will continue to draw from the emotional and abstract sonic storytelling method I used in LOVE. It is inspired by abstract expressionist art which does away with the use of a subject to convey meaning and instead uses abstraction, color, and form to convey raw emotion, straight from the artist to the audience. I’m calling the project Solar Plexus because, in each track, I explore a feeling or experience in my life that I feel in the center of my chest. Instead of using words to convey a message, I felt that the use of music and sound design could provide a more visceral experience for the listener, and help them catharize their own solar plexus experiences.

C41: ⁠What are you most excited about?

KC: I’m most excited about the live potential of this music. When I first performed Solar Plexus with only a basic set-up of trumpet, backing track, and synthesiser, I already had a transcendent experience on stage that I hadn’t had in years. In future performances of the project, I would like to experiment even more with orchestrating for live instruments, creating unique combinations of instrumentation, and live manipulation of samples. I want to try to find ways of incorporating more spontaneity and improvisation into how these songs are reproduced in a live setting. It’s exciting to return to my roots as a jazz trumpet player, but this time in the context of experimental music.