Lando brings relaxing eastward leaning production courtesy of Triceratop & The Lasso that illustrates an artist finding his voice, style & presence that comes at the listener with a determination that is not pandering to anyone or anything but anything Lando Chill desires to be.
Four projects deep into a burgeoning career, Lando is confident that his time for recognition is coming. At 26, he’s the youngest member on Team Mello and the one who didn’t have a cult following before signing on the dotted line. He’s determined to leave his own mark. “I think once people realize it’s not just Oddisee and Mike Eagle, we’ll get the respect we deserve,” he says. “[The Lasso and I are] are too good to be forgotten about. It’s the most different music on the label. You gotta live with it and sit with it to be able to get down with it.”
What does it mean to speak to the wind? On Lando Chill’s upcoming record, The Boy Who Spoke to the Wind, communing with nature is synonymous with communing with the soul. Inspired by Paolo Coelho’s acclaimed novel, The Alchemist, Lando’s new album catalogs his own internal pilgrimage. The novel’s protagonist, Santiago, quests through the desert in hopes of becoming the wind and freeing his soul; a quest that is driven by an innate desire to fulfill his Personal Legend—his destiny
Washington is nothing if not ambitious. He is already eagerly discussing his next record, another concept album, this one based on Paulo Coelho’s novel The Alchemist. It may be that writing about a less closely held topic will allow him the room to open up, and to experiment with a style that fits him better than much of the music on For Mark. In an interview with Respect Magazine, he declared that he didn’t have a definitive sound, saying that instead he had “a voice, a message.” But while there’s no reason why an artist should be wedded to any particular genre, for a largely unknown musician like Lando Chill, developing a comfortable musical approach might accentuate that message, and allow it to resonate.
The Boy Who Spoke to the Wind unfurls Lando Chill's odyssey of self-discovery, layering inventive beats and rhymes with heady flights of mythology and bracing, earthbound politics. Across 15 tracks and 45 minutes, the album refutes what Coehlo characterized as the world's greatest lie: "At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate."
"Being able to grasp the idea that we are here for a purpose, one that nobody else is going to hand you or create for you, is an idea that's freeing." He believes most people learn this right before dying. "They realize their purpose at the precipice of their demise, and it comes as a relief but also an eternal sadness. That's something I never want to feel."
Much like on Joni Mitchell’s 1975 landmark The Hissing of Summer Lawns, jazz functions as a departure point on The Boy Who Spoke to the Wind, so that the music is no longer quite recognizable as jazz. The album also strains against the limits of hip-hop. Dense and challenging, The Boy Who Spoke to the Wind doesn’t digest easily in one sitting, at least not at first. But Lando Chill and company reward their listeners and fellow artists alike—not to mention rap music as a whole—for the patience their new music demands.
