There was once a man who lived alone in an apartment block with just a plant. Nobody really knew much about this man other than that he rocked the hell out of a beanie and that he occasionally wore sunglasses that verged on steam-punk. A little girl lived next door to him with her family and one day her entire family got murdered by a corrupt police officer and his goons. Long story short, this guy turned out to be a hitman, and a badass one at that. His name was Leon.
S O H N is a little bit like Leon in that his name is just a single word and he’s quite mysterious with very few details surrounding him. OK, he’s not really that much like Leon to be honest but I couldn’t really think of a very good opener, other than talking about the spacing and capitalisation of his name which is extremely annoying. I do however like the film Leon and also like S O H N though so maybe it works a little bit…
Anyway, ramble over and on to the meat and potatoes, S O H N is the kind of musician that would probably call himself a producer instead of a musician. He makes extremely emotional and soul heavy ambient sounding electronica. A bit like James Blake but probably less likely to cash in on a Feist cover (bet he was gutted he didn’t make the cut for a John Lewis ad…) or be anywhere near as jittery in the way he chooses to force out tears.
First and foremost is his voice, and what a voice it is. It’s like a reassuring chat with a wisened, emphatic loved one with their finger on realism. I usually hate any kind of electronic music that pushes any girly emotional Bon Iver slant but S O H N manages it quite well and his tunes are extremely arresting. You might not like it straight away but at the same time you probably won’t want to turn it off either, which is a very good quality to have in music. For this reason S O H N is probably one of the more interesting artists I’ve been sent this year and if he could get round to single spacing his name so it doesn’t keep fucking up my blog format I’d probably say I love him a bit. You should check him out by clicking below and let us know what you reckon to him in the comments.
