By Deuce

LokkisKott is unabashedly doing the most on his single “Deep Inside”, which dropped this spring. Granted, the tune clocks in at just under six minutes, so he’s got room to breathe, roll up his shirt sleeves, and flex his musical muscles, if you will.

But there’s little preparing you for just what exactly he unveils on this oeuvre. There’s pregnant, pointed moments (around the four-minute marker) when he does nothing at all, leaving the track bereft of all sounds for a heady second or two as he musters his strength. At other times, someone is wailing away on an acoustic guitar with a fervor that’s hard to believe. It seems to double and triple up in rhythm in moments, sometimes going to exceedingly high pitches, while in others it simply rains down rhythmic melody.

Plus, he’s working with some sort of percussion that could very well be the man simply thumping his forefingers against the wooden base of the guitar—or perhaps against his heart. In fact, that’s how the song begins for at least a minute: just this eldritch, ethnic sounding percussion and the acoustic guitar whirling around, between, and within it, as though the two were somehow intertwined in my man’s mind.

You’d be hard pressed not to believe that this is a purely instrumental piece until, a minute or two into the mix, the artist hits the mic with a saccharine style that roundly complements his musicianship. So how on earth does he go from that to raging—in a bellicose manner that threatens to overwhelm—“I just want to kill them/ them so slowly”, then bust out harmonizing in the next bar (or sometimes even in the same bar) with that sweet crooning of his?

Talk about cogency. Whoever “them” (though it sounds like “him” sometimes) is, is definitely in trouble, judging by the ragged roaring LokkisKott is kicking on the cut. But it’s a delightful antipode to the pureness of the guitar playing, the whirlwind percussion, and whatever pathos that is plaguing the musician.

Thus, LokkisKott accomplishes much in this one tune. It’s best to hear it to believe it.