Album: Ajukaja & Mart Avi - Death of Music

Death of Music was created in Estonia. Despite the English lyrics, directness is absent. Take the title track. “Drop the music” exhorts Mart Avi over its pulsing five minutes. “Fight the music” he declares. The word “execution” crops up. There is reference to a “rope ladder.” The specific meaning of this torrent of imagery is unclear. Nonetheless, it is certain the untrammelled outpouring confirms Avi’s total surrender to the music.

This duo album is partially about its impact. However, as it unfurls over its 66 minutes it is increasingly clear that – whatever the lyrical opacity – Death of Music also seems to be a cri du couer lamenting the isolation wrought by the modern, digital-focussed world.

Ajukaja, one of Death of Music's two creators, is the assumed name of Raul Saaremets, of the on-and-off band Röövel Ööbik, a pivotal indie-dance outfit whose first album appeared in 1989, two years before Estonia achieved independence from the Soviet Union. A Röövel Ööbik album was issued in 2024. Saaremets also has a long-term involvement with house music. Mart Avi, the other mover here, first attracted attention from around 2010 as a member of the oddball band Badass Yuki and then, after 2013, with his solo work. Avi is the voice of Death of Music and its cover star. Previously, his singing sporadically had a Billy MacKenzie-ish edge. This has now been supplanted by a plaintive, lilting melodicism.

Sonically, there are pointers as to where Avi's and Saaremets' dance-inflected electronica is coming from. Death of Music lightly leans into Flying Lotus and J Dilla schematics, by way of the early Toro y Moi and John Maus (were the latter stripped of the Joy Division-isms) with a pinch of Yello. Saint Etienne’s foggy 2021 album I've Been Trying to Tell You is atmospherically close. Avi’s ghostly yet sweet voice is more Sylvester than the agonised crooner it initially seems to be. Odd vocal injections suggest Suicide’s Alan Vega. There are also fleeting hints of George Michael. Improbably, the album’s fifth track “Lucky Strike” has a lyrical quote drawn from The Fall’s “Paint Work.”

Overall though, Death of Music is best taken as an oblique counterpoint to Pet Shop Boys were they freeze dried and then locked in a vault where the only illumination is ultra-violet light. Should director Nicolas Winding Refn be on the hunt for his next film's music, he need look no further.

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