Exclusive track premiere of ‘Bank Holiday Wknd’ by DC experimental pop artist Michael Kentoff.

For Michael Kentoff, the singer-songwriter of The Caribbean, writing songs is like solving puzzles. After being inspired by the footwork genre of electronic dance music, he became curious about merging indie-pop techniques with its fragmented production style. This creative journey was a way for him to navigate the challenges of postpartum depression that followed the release of his band’s album. The outcome is his solo debut, a self-titled album that fuses experimental soundscapes with meticulously crafted melodies.

Kentoff’s process involved sampling and looping in Ableton, resulting in refractive pop songs that intertwine with his unique sense of melody, vocals, and abstract lyrics. His single ‘Bank Holiday Wknd,’ characterized by a looped guitar riff and a chopped-up hip-hop beat, captures his mix of anxiety and fascination with the UK’s Bank Holidays.

Kentoff reflects on the single, “‘Bank Holiday Wknd’ reflects my state-of-mind when I wrote it: I hated the humiliation of my job. When I started recording this record in my office (which made me the coolest or stupidest lawyer in America), the goal was two-fold: (a) do something I loved for a change, and (b) take my heart back.

But know this: no billable hours were harmed in the making of this record! The various things I do in my life need to work syncretically; that is, they shouldn’t work zero-sum to each other. So while I dreamed of days off and made a record in my office, door closed, I never bailed from work to make the record. There was plenty of down time and I made good use of it.

As I recall, the music was derived from two or three pieces of library music – cut up, warped, and reshaped. The trick was finding a meaningful melody from music I did not myself write from scratch on guitar or piano but from scraps of other people’s sounds. Ultimately, I adore pop music and no matter the source or how abstract a song might be, it’ll always have to stand up for me as beautiful, emotionally-conflicted pop music.”

The following passage might be as direct as Kentoff gets as a lyricist: Exam Chem II/You’ve never been/Why are we off? Why are we off? Bank holiday. Bank holiday. When pressed, Kentoff says the song was also based on his curiosity about the UK’s tradition of Bank Holidays.

Headline photo: Cameron Whitman

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