The French-Brazilian producer, singer and songwriter Yndi Ferreira, best known as Dream Koala, has been getting noticed for a minute now. The 21-year-old musician released his best-known song, a one-off track called "We Can't Be Friends," in 2012; and it struck a chord in the R&B and hip-hop universes, with Chicago emcee Mick Jenkins, LA-based rapper/singer Doja Cat and New York rap veteran Fabolous all putting their respective spins on it. That track's instrumental offered a great introduction to Dream Koala's curiosity in work that is expansive, and amorphous, a way of expressing his interests in space, time and how we fit into the cosmic construct; it is a theme that the 2014 EP, Earth. Home. Destroyed, also successfully expounded upon.
With "Dimension Sleeper," the first single off his latest, Exodus, Ferreira continues to forge ahead with that concept. His vocals remain deliberate yet malleable, ambling through a dystopian world of sound that swirls and tilts constantly. The track at first feels curiously solid, but soon Dream Koala's voice begins to undulate through the spaces he's purposely left open. His style invokes the subdued R&B singers of yesteryear, including the Queen of soft-focus vocals, Sade. The highly electronic production itself expands and retracts as Dream Koala crawls over, under and through its gelatinous plains, looking for both a way out and a way in.
Much of "Dimension Sleeper" feels like an uninhibited foray into a new musical dimension, a less dissonant, sweeter take on FKA Twigs' experiments. Yet by the time we arrive in the final 50 seconds, everything changes. Dream Koala's voice dissipates and the remaining sounds feel like a recalibration, almost as if he's righting himself — and by extension, as if we're righting ourselves — for the trip ahead.
Exodus is out on Dec. 4 on Bandcamp.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
