Top Tracks: Kuri – The Great Orator

‘The Great Orator’ is a curious creation. It carries a kind of lavish and expansive feel akin to The Family Crest or Arcade Fire, but is tempered by a bittersweet melancholy reminiscent of The National. The result is a sweeping cinematic soundscape that could rush headfirst into something grand and epic at a moment’s notice, but instead holds back and delves into something more elegant, austere and introspective. Like a great mind turning to questions with no answer, or someone who seemingly has everything leaving it all behind and succumbing to wanderlust. Written about “feeling like you’ve discovered something that no one else knows”, it’s almost as though Canadian artist Kuri could blow your mind with ease if he wanted to, but instead takes you by the hand and encourages you to discover things on your own. Both empty and uplifting, like soaring high through the frigid northern sky with clouds obscuring the world below, this track makes you its plaything like no other.