KAIAR is no stranger to the music scene, having produced an excellent self-titled EP in 2017. On ‘Human’, her latest single, she is demonstrating a powerful iteration of her style, boldly displaying her pop sensibility, vulnerability, talent and accessibility. Accompanied by a hauntingly beautiful video which is so complimentary to the track, ‘Human’ slowly unfurls from its ambient beginnings, with additional elements gracefully being layered to reach a satisfying climax.
We had KAIAR offer us some background on the track, and how it came to be.
“The seed of this idea came to me on a tram to uni like 3 years ago. I was reading a lot of Kahil Gibran at the time, so I think my brain was geared in this way that mirrored a lot of his metaphors and phrasing.
I was people watching, thinking about who these people on the tram were with me and what they felt and how they were putting on masks/personas for the daily grind. I kind of wanted to know if they felt like me on the inside, but there was no real sign or way of knowing.
It got me to thinking about how the downfall of my relationships had always come down to how I was going about protecting myself in this really unproductive way. I was shutting people out of my emotional centre- including myself and I was quick to bite if I was feeling threatened. I think when one person does that to someone in any kind of relationship it creates a bit of chain reaction of defensiveness until ultimately the relationship dies.
I’d recently taken a break from dating as the last experience I’d had ended messily because I was facing some problematic parts of myself properly for the first time. A friend and I chatted one night about it and she pointed out that change could happen if I was more thoughtful of when and where to use my thorns if I need to. I released I was acting as if I had an exoskeleton, a bit like a crab/crustacean, and was becoming totally unfamiliar with who I was – which was a Human.
The lyrics became an exploration of how to undo that and break ourselves open to each other, finding the weak spots within ourselves and apply pressure.
The production came much later as I wanted it to do justice to the song and build on the idea of an emotional journey through the music. The production starts off softer, kind of like a quiet thought or an inkling that something is wrong and progressively becomes fuller and more urgent, as if its a call to action to fix that problem.”
