King Krule performing at Melt! Festival 2013 – Credit Henry Laurisch
Hello?
Through moans of the dead
The universe in skulls
Hello?
As oceans stand still
Steel structures dissolves
Of dust soft fuzz
Is anybody out there? Hello?
She pants, she pants
All I can see is her mouth
Is anybody out there? Hello?
Its motion, it’s urgent, its trigger
Is there anybody out there?
Pulling us in, she pants
Is there anybody out there?
Distortion trails up spines
The locomotive has arrived
Is there anybody out there?
The locomotive has arrived
-King Krule – “The Ooz”
What does this sound like to you?
Find a comfortable spot and put in some good headphones. Step outside your musical comfort zone and embark on an emotional journey. Take a moment to listen to King Krule’s hauntingly raw and captivating song. Trust me, it’s an experience worth embracing.
The artist
Archie Marshall-aka King Krule- as an artist is enigmatic and yet open, and his songs can be relaxing yet tense, vague yet so easily understood in a way that people cannot put into words. The way that I would describe his music is it’s so incredibly human.
The concepts he tackles are heavy and complex. His music is full of tonal poetry, riffs that represent actions, and poetic lyrics that draw indescribable feelings from those notes.
His music may not be everyone’s first choice for a long car ride though, his voice is unique and grating, and his harmonies can be so full of tension that they’re unpleasant at times. But music isn’t always meant to be pleasant.
The music theory
The signature guitar riff ostinato is outlining a really fascinating chord progression. An F#-7, to a D-7, resolving to an Amaj7 chord, which becomes a dominant chord to restart the loop. A genius set of chords.
The secret to how he makes it work is the voice leading, or how notes in chords move to become notes in other chords.
The notes right beside each other in or between each chord, in music called half steps, form the tension and release. As they move from one chord to the next, this tension leads to a small catharsis or forms a different kind of stress. Every note in each of these chords falls in half steps, the only exception being the e at the top, this produces a sinking feeling.
In the F#-7 in the intro and verses Archie adds a 6th, being the d# a half step below the 7th of that chord, which doesn’t exist in the assumed tonic key of A major. This both gives us a feeling of instability throughout this section and stability through the chorus which has more tonic-y chords.
The D-7 chord serves as a minor 4 in the key of A major, which kinda sounds like you’re floating gently through a cloud, it produces this sinking feeling because both the 3rd and the 7th are falling a half step down from the tonic scale. You might recognize this minor 4 chord feeling from other songs like Green Day’s ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’.
Archie uses a lot of jazz chords in his music, such as in “Borderline” or “Easy Easy”, so the 1maj7 is no surprise, but the minor 4 really brings out more color out of this already colorful chord.
Even more than this, the real kicker here is the first chord that I mentioned, why the 6th in the F#-7? You could call it A lydian but it doesn’t seem to function that way. Lydian is usually used to capitalize off of the 5maj7 chord, such as in Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie. Instead, it seems like it’s used to begin with more tension to be resolved floating downwards.
That d# is the one sharp in the neighboring key of E that doesn’t exist in the key of A major. It also happens to be a half step below the 5th in the key of A, so when the Amaj7 resolution is reached, that half step tension is resolved upwards, forming the root of a major third interval with the major 7th of the A major 7 chord.
Not to mention, the d that the d# sank to also resolves to the C# 3rd of the Amaj7 chord, forming the most important interval of a major chord.
Truly fascinating, and I would say genius stuff. But these chords are paired with lyrics, so let’s take a look at those.
True poetry
The quote I read to you in the beginning is a monologue read with a woman’s voice in an accent at nearly a whisper.
The words themselves are thick and dense with meaning, the first 4 lines describing a hopeless existence, “Through moans of the dead, the universe in skulls, as oceans stand still, steel structures dissolve.”
The immediate thought is of some hell-scape filled with living dead, those producing the ‘moans of the dead’, or a dystopian future where the world is empty, steel structures dissolving after passed times and a universe of skulls.
But then you have to think of who is saying these words, a woman whispering such dark thoughts to you. The recording and mixing of her voice is also very similar to ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response. The result of ASMR is a feeling like that the sound is right beside your ear, usually resulting in a shiver down your spine. It’s also interesting to note the line “Distortion trails up spines” included in the opening poem.
This is clearly a really intimate situation, but between every few lines is the interjection: “Is anybody out there? Hello?” Here we are with someone so close that their whispers are sending shivers down our spine, but we feel so alone.
So what’s going on here? Let’s read on into the chorus:
I don’t know why
I search for you
Could we align?
Can we meet here?
Until the end of time
The chords here mix it up a bit. We have a C#-, F#-, E7, Amaj7. These chords stick to the tonic key much better, iii, vi, V7, Imaj7. The presentation of these chords is also much bouncier, producing a contrast between the chorus and the verses where the chorus has more space to breath.
After a few repetitions, he ends the chorus with the progression of C#-, F#-, Bdim, Amaj7, playing up into the higher register. Bdim is a form of the ii that is functionally similar to a minor iv since two notes are in common and the voice leading is nearly identical. This is a slower paced, yet pivotal moment in the song that ends with the question: “Can we meet here, until the end of time?”
Viewing art as viewing oneself
Archie generally likes to leave his music up to the listener’s interpretation. Saying in one interview that he enjoys being mysterious. But even apart from that, leaving music up to interpretation is part of what makes music such a valuable art.
The same piece of art can evoke intense feelings from 2 different listeners, and if you ask them what caused that intense feeling, they’d both likely give you two different personal answers. Music is powerful because it communicates deep emotions that words could never do justice, with no need for experiences to be shared. In fact, in a way, it can be like sharing an experience.
Although he leaves his music generally up to interpretation, all music is the result of some experience or culmination of experiences that inspired it. With the concept of ‘ooz’, Archie has two reasons.
The first is from his previous name “Zoo Kid”, Ooz is Zoo backwards. Although thankfully he left out the work kid backwards. Then in an interview with the New York Times he says that the Ooz is the stuff our bodies are constantly discharging: “You go to sleep and your nails grow, you get boogies, your hair, your teeth…you’ve got to refine it every day.”
This song is titled “The Ooz”, which he says represents bodily discharge. There’s a woman so close there are chills going up his spine, whispering in his ear. But he sees the world around him as empty, hopeless, even hellish.
Let’s look at the verse, this is using the same chord progression from the intro::
Is there anybody out there?
‘Cause I’m all alone
In soft bleeding, we will unite
We OOZ two souls, pastel blues
Heightened touch from losing sight
Swimming through the blue lagoon
Basking in the dark of night
Of depths unknown to be explored
We sink together through the sky (the sky)
I think it’s getting pretty obvious by this point what this is about, but if you’re still not sure I won’t leave you hanging for too much longer.
Archie says he’s all alone, and then says that he will unite with someone. Then he speaks from the ‘we’ perspective, we ooz two souls, we have heightened touch from losing sight, we are swimming through the blue lagoon and basking in the dark of night.
Then finally, we sink together through the sky.
And again he says:
I don’t know why
I search for you
Could we align?
Can we meet here?
Until the end of time
At the question of “Can we meet here?” everything pauses. Like everything hinges on this moment, the answer to this question. Archie is invested in this, and needs to know. He needs to be able to meet with this person. But the answer never comes.
The music here is a perfect and human reaction to the lack of an answer, the best way I can describe it is that it’s hopeless. That’s how I would describe this entire song, but up to here it’s kind of like a hopelessness that you just live with.
The climax
Like many seasons of life, living without hope for so long that it becomes normal. You become desensitized to your own feelings of despair.
But after a while, everyone has a breaking point, and emotions will bubble up eventually. This is portrayed by the climax of this song. At first it seems like Archie is in denial. He asks again: “Is anybody out there?”, then a big hint comes up: “A lover’s sigh”.
Is anybody out there?
A lover’s sigh
To be absorbed
But I let go, I slip alone
Sorrow weeps my lucid eye (lucid eye)
The sigh is to be absorbed, but Archie doesn’t absorb it. He slips away, alone, and he cries. To be lucid is to be fully aware and so he cries while in his right mind, fully aware of what is going on.
As he says “Sorrow weeps my lucid eye, “ and we hear his voice in the back nearly screaming “lucid eye”, we know that his hopelessness has become too much.
Abandoned bodies by numb minds
The universe salutes, Lucifer cries
Immediately we go from lucid to ‘Abandoned bodies by numb minds’. Either his mind is retreating into itself to escape, or he’s seeing the rest of the world for its numbness, abandonment and hopelessness.
Then comes arguably the most loaded line of the song: “The universe salutes, Lucifer cries.” And this is the exact moment when the pot boils over. The ambient noise in the background at this point crescendos into screams of pain as he says the next few lines:
Within heartbeats, you strum goodbye
Then repeating it with more fervor:
Within your heartbeats, you say goodbye
Finally, rife with pain, he asks the same questions for the last time:
I don’t know why
Is anybody out there?
Could we align?
The big picture
Most people in our culture have or will experience these feelings that Archie is sharing. Hopelessness, guilt, loneliness, shame.
Our world is growing increasingly more connected and yet further apart, we can communicate at the tap of our fingers and yet truly interact so little.
As a result, in our desperate need to feel important and receive attention, we may go to the extreme. Seeking out sexual relations, even from those we never knew before that encounter.
Because we never knew them, in the moment in which we are as close as we can possibly get to another human being, we may feel as lonely as we didn’t know possible in our hollow unity.
Archie is talking about sex. A woman is whispering in his ear, panting, pulling him in, and shivers are traveling up their spines. And the concept of ‘the ooz’- if I had to guess- encompasses all bodily fluids.
This encounter is clearly with someone he finds no satisfaction in, or else why would the world feel so empty to him as hinted by the intro poem?
Even more than that, the most connective act a human being can perform is leaving him feeling more disconnected than ever, which is why he constantly asks: “Hello? Is anybody out there?”
As well as “I don’t know why I search for you. Can we align?”
This impossible coexistence of connection and disconnection, filling yet emptiness, this act of deep love resulting in a feeling of deep loneliness and hopelessness. It’s impossible to comprehend, and so Archie’s pain boils over and is released in his cries in this song.
Some interpret this to be the literal ‘climax’ of this act, but Archie has said that he prefers to leave his songs up to interpretation. Even so, most good songs usually have a climax, and I wonder if both interpretations could be correct.
Just before the heartbeats lines is the insanely powerful line: “The universe salutes, Lucifer cries.” The universe as an idea is often used synonymously with a higher power, it saluting is acknowledging great despair. And Lucifer – the devil – is crying out, perhaps in victory that more pain is manifest. That human connection is rendered hollow, that our deepest act of love is tainted and turned into a deep act of sorrow borne out of a need to feel something, to feel someone else with us.
We desperately need this good thing, which is love, and we cannot get it. So we convince ourselves to receive something terrible instead, as a disfigured imitation of love.
The song ends with a similar poem to the intro, drawing this song to a cold close:
She pants, she steals
Can’t you breath?
Through moans of the dead
The universe in skulls
As oceans stand still
Steel structures dissolve
She weeps
Her sweet sting
Bleeding perfume perpetually
It overflows, it sinks
It drips in obnoxious ink
On streets, in clothes
She leaps, she limps
Tense liquid herbivore
Cannibal pacifier
She pushes me off
It’s cold by the fire
Archie isn’t speaking anymore while the narrator is like in the beginning, there aren’t any more words..
He is pushed off by her, and even at a source of warmth he is left cold.
Through haunting melodies and poetic lyrics, King Krule’s ‘The Ooz’ delves deep into the human experience, exploring the paradoxical nature of connection and disconnection, love and loneliness. It is a raw and visceral reflection on the desperation for intimacy and the profound emptiness that can follow. This song serves as a poignant reminder of the complexities of our emotional landscape and the eternal quest to find solace in a world that often leaves us yearning for more.