KŌAN

KŌAN is a 2022 four-part alt-pop koan: an EP cycle that only becomes legible as a whole, using Zen paradox, Japanese-language songwriting, spatial headphone production, internet friendship, atomic anxiety, and post-pandemic happiness as pieces of a single unresolved question. After Big Hug, the project opens outward: Japan, spatial sound, playlist reach, and a release structure that rolled out as EP chapters before becoming the full LP.

The arc, in order: Finding $D (lab notebook) → Swami’s (lore dump) → Dragon Ball $d (narrative hip-hopera) → Masks and Monsters (pandemic record) → Little Hug (small recovery object) → Big Hug (accessible thesis) → KŌAN.

KŌAN A: March 18, 2022, six songs. KŌAN B: May 29, 2022, six songs. KŌAN C: June 30, 2022, seven songs. KŌAN (LP): September 9, 2022: twenty-five tracks, about one hour three minutes, $10 on Bandcamp (24-bit/48kHz), on Spotify and Apple Music, ℗ 2022 Beformer. Four parts of one whole: the three EP chapters plus a fourth movement only on the LP (September, 1101, Get the Funk Out of My Head, 4:20 pm, Miss Disinformation, to everyone who had a good pandemic). Max Horwich promoted a free release show that same night at Wonderville in Brooklyn — Scoobert’s first New York performance, with Swimware, Trickster, and DJ sets by Saltzshaker b2b N0serv1ce; Songkick lists the date.

The whole thing is doing the koan move: each part appears separately graspable, but the meaning is withheld until the listener sees that the parts do not resolve into a normal thesis. Four doors, one room. Or maybe four rooms, no door. That is the point.

The Bandcamp note on KŌAN A states it plainly: “A koan is and isn’t a paradox. With and without power.” That EP was built for headphone listening, with spatial audio / Dolby Atmos / binaural work and “a 360 swirl of sound.” Not just a batch of songs; a listening-format experiment. Two tracks have 360° music videos + spatial audio with Max Horwich: a song to quit your job to · Wouldn’t It Be Nice (cover), on /music/#selected-videos. Intro (track thirteen on the LP, KŌAN C) is instrumental, the clearest binaural/spatial example on the record: and leads into No Worries, Yes Worries. The same note says SHIAWASE NO IMI was Scoobert’s first song written in Japanese, and that Japan mattered to the record’s name, aesthetic, and the people who inspired the songs. Luke sang in Japanese on KŌAN for that reason, and because of how much he was reading Zen at the time. SHIAWASE NO IMI roughly means “the meaning of happiness.” KODOMO MITAI means “like a child” (song note). 無門関 is The Gateless Gate.

The hinge inside the record is Think About It → SHIAWASE NO IMI → Keep Calm Atomic Bomb: quantum/paradox jokes, Japanese happiness-pop, then historical dread and inherited burden. Still the same Scoobert move: make the scary thing singable. Happiness or anxiety, childlike or adult, internet or real life, joke or sincerity, beach ease or atomic dread. KŌAN C is where four tracks on this site live: Who Am I Really Fooling Anyway, 無門関, What Makes You You, All My Friends Live on the Internet.

Glasse Factory frames Think About It as the KŌAN A opener, with Big Hug nominated at the San Diego Music Awards and Scoobert showing up on Spotify’s New Music Friday, Fresh Finds, Fresh Finds Pop, and Indie Brandneu around this era. Nagamag on No Worries, Yes Worries: Indie Brandneu, Today’s Indie Rock, and production work with CHAI and Shingo Murakami. What comes next is Moonlight Beach: Encinitas, covers, collaborators, and songs built to be played outside.