Kavé Takes Us Through Waves Into the World of Perpetua

I sometimes wonder what people think about right before they fall asleep. You close your eyes and somehow the whole day comes back – faces, places, foolish things you said, or better things you forgot to say. Then your brain takes all that stuff and somehow turns it into its own little movie.

Billions of us probably do this every night. We get lost in whatever our heads come up with, fall asleep somewhere along the way, then wake up and start all over again. And yeah… that’s kind of where Kavé took me with Through Waves.

A radio signal from 2325

Trust me, we’re going much farther than the bedroom here. The year is 2325, Earth is somewhere far away, and a radio signal is coming from a failed human colony called Perpetua.

Yep. Now we can start.

The guy behind Kavé is Alex Kos, a London-based musician, producer and visual storyteller. As for the music, you’ll hear dream-pop, psychedelic and progressive rock, electronic music and film scores. Then we get to Perpetua, and this is where it gets a bit weird. Kavé is stuck there, sending mixtapes back to Earth through radio signals. Music, bits of the past, and little pieces of another world travelling a very, very long way to reach us.

Through Waves is transmission number two. Alex writes these releases almost like films, so characters and dialogue become part of the music itself. He’s already got an independent illustrator and animator working with him on the next film, so there’s plenty more to come from Perpetua.

Through Waves, one scene at a time

Through Waves plays out in three parts. First, Kavé travels alone along an alien coastline. Then he finds a woman standing at the ocean’s edge, and voice actor Abigail Turner enters the story: “Through waves I dive / In deep ocean blue.”

I don’t know, there’s something about how calm she sounds here. It just gets you right into the scene. Then comes a line I particularly love: “I swim further than ever / Through the waves I know.” I really like that line.

Later, Bronwyn Rose takes over the vocals as the woman becomes the main character. “Salt waters on my skin,” she sings, while the guitars, synths and instrumentals slowly build into a psychedelic dream-pop finale. The words are simple. The world they create is huge.

For me, that’s where the production really wins. It’s unbelievable how a few simple words can put the whole scene in your head. I’ve heard plenty of narrative productions over the years, and I really loved what they did here.

Press play and enter Perpetua

The Through Waves comes as Official Film on Youtube, which you can watch right here in the article. It follows the same journey through surreal coastlines, oceans, figures and celestial bodies. And really, Kavé already gives us all the cinema we need. Trying too hard to explain it would probably spoil half the fun.

By the end, I felt like I’d walked into Perpetua myself, had a look around and somehow made it back to report what I found.

You can make your own trip. Follow Kavé here, tune into the next transmission and see what Perpetua sends back to Earth. Just remember where you parked the spaceship.

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