From the moment you listen to Instupendo‘s music, you instantly get sucked into his beautifully eccentric mind. At just 22 years old, he spent the better part of his teen years meticulously developing his own singular sound marked by his soft, whispery voice amidst a flurry of artfully enveloped electronic textures. With his brilliant new album “Love Power A-Z”, just out this week, Instupendo takes his craft to a whole new level. Considerably more poppy and upbeat than his previous album “Boys & Girls”, Instupendo balances out his deadpan vocal delivery with a healthy dose of whimsical sound design.
“For everything, I designed tiny sounds that fill and stretch the songs to their full potential, like gum (akin to Vespertine-era Björk). Each song’s meant to feel like a diorama or fold out book, stuffed with little secrets waiting to be noticed.”
Never content with going too far in any one direction, Instupendo often seems to deliberately blend in an opposing concept for equilibrium. Or maybe just for an enjoyable amount of dissonance. At times throughout the record, you can hear a small yet noticeable amount of rap syncopation in his phrasing. Not to say his music is in any way even remotely related to Hip Hop, but you could hypothetically throw the vocals from “Dream Drop” or “Vitamin” over a trap beat and it would totally slap. Come to think of it, that would be kind of amazing to hear. But the juxtaposition of opposites and contradictions seem to be part of what makes his sound so compelling. He’s a bit of an enigma.
Instupendo, aka Aidan Peterson, has attracted a global audience with his unorthodox and emotional sound design in recent years. Described as “immaculate art pop” and “melancholic textured electronica”, it’s earned accolades from tastemakers and drawn a range of notable collaborators, from established artists like Toro Y Moi, Rostam and Ryan Hemsworth, to rising and underground talents such as Dylan Brady (100 Gecs), Himera and Oli XL.
