The rise and eventually plateau of iamamiwhoami is a depressing one. After a series of abstract videos on this YouTube channel started getting passed around by big-named bloggers, a thick buzz started to surrounded the project. Most of the excitement wasn't centered around the music; rather, it was the question of who was behind this anonymous project that was turning heads.
Was it Bjork? Was it Fever Ray? Was it Boards of Canada?
Well, now that we know it's Swedish singer-songwriter Jonna Lee, it seems a lot less people care. And that's fine. Marketing campaigns such as this that bait listeners and allow them to think something is something else are insulting anyway.
But it turns out that the music Lee is pumping out under this pseudonym isn't half bad. Though it isn't Fever Ray, it's not too unlike Karin Dreijer Andersson's solo project; however, lee lets pop influence her work a lot more than Andersson does.
On "; john," electronic arpeggios bubble underneath some breathy vocals and old school synthesizers. The groove drives as a nice speed, and the music is surprisingly, well, normal in comparison to the video, which seems to be about some kind of padded room where captive victims file in one-by-one for some kind of S&M-esque treatment. Or maybe I'm wrong. But what else do you expect with a mask like that?