Electronic veterans Phantoms have always had a knack for merging the nostalgic with the contemporary, but on their latest EP Perpetual Motion, the Los Angeles duo of Kyle Kaplan and Vinnie Pergola dive headfirst into the sounds that first inspired their musical journey. Released via ODESZA's Foreign Family Collective, this six-track collection serves as both a love letter to the golden age of blog house and a forward-thinking exploration of modern club music.
Following their 2022 album 'This Can't Be Everything,' the duo took time to experiment with their sound, ultimately creating a collection that bridges their indie-dance origins with their current club-forward evolution. Let's dive deep into each track of this nostalgia-tinged yet thoroughly modern EP.
"Floating On"
This track making it on the EP made us so so happy. The core of it was actually written a while back and we thought about putting it on our album This Can’t Be Everything but it just didn’t quite fit. It’s a pretty weird song but we've always loved it. When we were wrapping up the EP we felt like there was a hole in it, and this track just fit. Sonically it made much more sense, and it felt interesting to start a pretty dance focused EP with something slower and more melancholy. It feels like a bridge between our last album and where we are heading next. There’s a few things I’m really proud of on this one. The change in the beginning took quite a while to get just right. Also the ending was made in a total fugue state. There are so many ideas happening at once but somehow I feel like all the melodies make sense and it builds really well. This is definitely one not everyone is going to like but we needed to get it out there.
"Perpetual Motion"
“Perpetual Motion” was a bit of a turning point for us. This track was made pretty quickly at the start of the year without any real intention of releasing it. We just wanted to try making something in the vein of the dance music that got us into electronic music to play during our sets. Once we played it out for the first time in Chicago it clicked. We sent it around to some other producers and DJs and got a really good response. It felt like a good time to release this, I don’t know if we would have felt confident releasing it even a year ago. It’s a sound we absolutely love, but happens to be coming back into style more recently as younger generations are discovering the “blog house” era of music. We are both selfishly really excited for that genre's return. We’ve waited long enough. I literally have grey hair now.
"Don't Be Afraid" ft. Notelle
The core of this track actually started as an instrumental we made for our DJ sets with no real intention of releasing it. But the more we played it the more we were into it, it was just missing a vocal hook or something. One day we happened to dig around through some demos and came across this track with Notelle that we absolutely loved, just never really found a place for. It had a bit more of a pop structure but one of the lines really stood out for some reason: “Don’t be afraid of where we’ll go.” I love these simple sentiments that could really speak to any situation you might find yourself in. The listener is going to have a different feeling about that phrase than what we felt it meant for us. Once the vocal was in, everything else fell into place. That buildup in the middle is so fun to live.
"Without You" ft. Mariah Colon
There seems to be a theme here now that I’m writing all of this out: re-approaching old ideas with a newer mentality. This is a similar situation to “Don’t Be Afraid” actually. The core was a pretty simple ID we had for our DJ sets. Never really knew what to do with this beat for a long time. Then one day, we added two really simple rhodes chords and it clicked. We knew it needed a vocal so similarly to “Don’t Be Afraid” we went back to a song we had worked on with the amazing Mariah Colon out of Chicago. Her voice is so great but we had done a song with a more traditional pop structure. Listening to it all of a sudden we come across those two lines: “Tell me how to be without you… cuz every time I dream about you.” We’ve always loved melancholy and dance music working together. I’ve had plenty of experiences on a dancefloor having the time of my life but also thinking of someone that’s not there. It’s so universal.
"Non-Stop"
The one annoying thing about this song is we still have yet to play it live. This came together in a whirlwind at the last minute while finishing the EP. I was listening to this one demo we had that was super ethereal and kind of sombre and then noticed this one synth that was pretty underused in the whole track. After a few minutes of messing around with it, it was clear that it needed to be the focal point of the track and it needed to be closer to “Perpetual Motion” sonically. We did something here that I haven’t done in a while – manipulating the pitch of the oscillators on the synth to create the chords. The beat definitely wears its influences on its sleeve but that’s what I love about it. Got to see It’s Murph drop it in Seattle and it went off. Truly cannot wait to play this one live all next year when we’re back on the road.
"Moonflower" ft. Varju
Since I’m not much of an actual musician’s musician I find I rarely play live instruments on our records. One day I was a bit sick of being on the computer so I laid down a pretty simple indie bass line and guitars over some drums. It definitely was different than our normal stuff but the progression stuck with us. It didn’t feel so far away sonically that it would just go in the garbage. We ended up sending it to Varju from Slenderbodies to see if he had any ideas and he came back with this amazing vocal plus that crazy vocal/saxophone-sounding hook. We really didn’t change all that much from that stage, there was a nice rawness to the instruments, his voice and the production. It also felt like the perfect song to cap off this EP, not just a straight dance record like “Nonstop.” We can’t help ourselves but end on an emotional note.
Perpetual Motion is now available via all streaming platforms.
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