lkon klng - Stand

lkon king

stand
self-released; 2016

​3.3 out of 5

By Jamie Funk

lkon klng is the one-man project by Alfred Bastion. He is a twenty-year-old who explains “When I write songs I just try and capture how it feels to be twenty and not know where you're going to end up.” Being fifteen years older and barely even remembering being that young I can say that feeling never completely goes away. After college you wonder what kind of job you are going to get, after you get married you wonder how many kids you'll have, and after you have kids you wonder how much your funeral arrangements will cost.

I think Bastion was singing about some of these things on his release stand which revolves around his guitar and vocals. I’m not sure how some of these recordings got so muddy on occassion but I couldn’t make out most of the lyrics and when you have songs with vocals and a guitar it's mighty important that you can hear the words.

Bastion has some talent but still has a lot of work ahead of him if he hopes to be competitive with notable artists. The guitar parts are comprised of basic chord structure and that's really about it.

He opens with “helpnow” which utilizes a backward effect while sort of singing/moaning about something. Up next is “firefall” which contains a couple of strummed chords and indecipherable words. There are some decent melodies in there but they were undermined by the lo-fi recording.

The next couple of songs are more of the same basic chords followed by singing which is muffled by the low frequencies. “Boogerstorm” sounds a little less muddy and I could make out some of the lyrics. He sings about the Internet being down and draining hot water. He closes with a piano piece entitled “afterhours” which revolves around basic chords as well. 

Bastion somewhat reminds me of the twenty-year-old I was fifteen years ago - a soul who’s going through existential problems, break ups and all the normal rite of passage stuff that happens until you eventually mutate into an adult who hopefully has a better grasp of how to deal with the world around them. As for as the music goes I have some advice for Bastion. I’d make sure he starts to learn the basics of recording, Even with a little knowledge and consumer equipment you can make a guitar and vocals sound good with proper mic placement, EQ and compression. There were some catchy melodies on this album but it’s not going to matter if they aren't audible. 

​Overall, the talent Bastion has needs some refinement and if he continues to write music this release will most likely be his humble beginnings.

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