Judging by his music, Boston-via-Chicago based musician PONCHOS is a man of many moods. The project, for now, is a one-man-show, James Krivchenia, a 23 year-old whose first encounter with music was playing drums in the 4th grade. Since then, he’s been in numerous bands and has worked mixing and producing different records.
His latest project is the “Rawness” EP, which he put out last November and is free to download on his Bandcamp. Just within the three tracks the EP contains, it’s easy to see how diverse of an artist PONCHOS really is.
Up first in a remix of Colin Stetson’s “Red Horse”, a track which he almost doubles in length, adding warped vocals, heavy drums that almost sound tribal and all sorts of weird sound effects to the mix. The result is a song that sounds like a heavier version of the original, maintaining the essence but adding depth, one successful way to remix a song.
Coincidence or not, the next track on the EP, “Look Around”, manages to capture almost the same phrasing as the “Red Horse” remix, slowly building until a sudden break and a massive release at about the 1:15 mark. Although the track kind of wanders aimlessly for a bit, the addition of extra instruments throughout keeps things interesting till the end.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is “Sexual”, which closes the EP. It’s the first time we hear PONCHOS’ vocals more or less clearly, and is the first song that has intelligible lyrics. For me, it’s the standout track on “Rawness”, with very light instrumentation in the first half and lyrics about feeling sexual. It’s easy to picture getting down with a lover to the song, and picking up the pace in the second half when the song changes pace and takes a turn for the dark before returning to its origin for the last bit.
The rest of PONCHOS’ material is, for the most part, very ambient, with songs as long as ten minutes, which is a genre that he seems to know his way around very well. A particular highlight is “Free Go Lily” a track over seven minutes long in which he explores several sonic landscapes much in the same way that Balam Acab does.
While currently existing only on the Internet, James is toying with the idea of getting a live group together. If so, seeing PONCHOS live could certainly prove to be a dreamlike experience.
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