Ian Daniel Kehoe and Luka Kuplowsky’s collaborative record as Ingredient is part poetry reading, part rave.
In many ways, Ingredient, the self-titled debut by the new collaborative project from Ian Daniel Kehoe and Luka Kuplowsky, was an art therapy exercise. When Kehoe was afflicted with a myriad of psychosomatic symptoms and a general feeling of heaviness during the summer of 2020, he asked his friend and fellow Toronto-based singer-songwriter, Kuplowsky, if they could make an album together. It gave the duo a reason to come together and muse, reconnect, and, particularly for Kehoe, to heal. On “Photo,” Kehoe asks, “what do we mean when we talk about happiness?” The question mirrors the heaviness that he felt going into the project, but by album’s end, it’s evident that meaningful friendship is at the root of happiness.
Influenced by the works of poets, philosophers, and Blue Cliff Record (a text of Zen Buddhism), as Ingredient, Kehoe and Kuplowsky view life through a telescopic lens. The pair analyze the data of a California raindrop (“Raindrop”), see imbalances in nature (“Variation”), and distill what feels like an entire lifecycle into a handful of words (“Resurface”). The world is both incredibly finite and overflows with mystery. “The closer we observe things, the further they retreat into abstraction,” Kuplowsky summarizes in “Photo.”
The music that Kehoe releases under his own name (including 2022’s Yes Very So) is often ‘80s synth-pop, while lately, Kuplowsky’s folk songs are rooted in jazz, pop (as heard on his 2020 record Stardust), and atmospheric poetics (like his 2022 recording Capturing The Evening Song (meditation collection)). In the Venn diagram of Kehoe and Kuplowsky’s sound worlds, Ingredient lives in the middle. It’s a lush electronic avant-pop record with an unwavering pulse and includes contributions from their frequent collaborators: Tamara Lindeman (the Weather Station) sings on “Photo,” Thom Gill sings on “Variation” and “Raindrop,” and Karen Ng’s saxophone showers “Raindrop” and “Illumination.” Varying synth tones move together continuously, sparkling like a rhinestone jumpsuit-wearing dance troupe performing under the moon; Ingredient is part poetry reading, part rave.
