header image: internet cafe by @kh4leem
words: aggy kazlauskas
the south london duo serve up a love letter to the city
london has long reigned as the world’s hotbed of new talent, and internet cafe’s debut ep ground floor is further proof that the big smoke hasn’t lost its magnetism just yet. released earlier this week, the four-track project is an eletronica-infused collection of songs that also double up as love letters to the very city in which the duo’s lead singer imi smith and producer luke ferrerro have found not only each other, but also their unique sound.
inspired by their home in south london, the aptly-titled record strings together stories of young adulthood and growing up surrounded by the dynamic patterns that only a metropolis such as london could possess.
“[it] is a selection of some of the earliest music we made and hopefully lays the foundation of what’s to come,” internet cafe explains. “The EP takes its name from the ground floor flat we share, where we’ve written, recorded, and produced most of our music since meeting on a dating app a few years ago. It felt right to dedicate the project to this space as it was the birth place of Internet Cafe and our relationship.”
the extended play kicks off with ‘the hills’, an everchanging number that opens with a purposefully unsuspecting, reverb-adjacent intro; a few moments later, smith’s vocals hit you with the type of lucidity that splashing your face with water after a night out brings. the track steadily builds to a grand finale, which is eventually closed into a perfect loop with a hazy finish akin to its beginning. featuring ferrero’s punchy, euphoric production, ‘the hills’ lays the groundwork for its successor ‘sign of the times’ – a confessional offering where pensive lyrics cut through its beat-driven arrangement. the production here occassionally sets its foot into hyperpop territory, almost as if the song was a necessary test drive before the ep’s crown jewel, ‘lost signal’, fully committed to blending the genre’s intricacies with vibrant trip-hop undertones.
when a project is as bouncy and charged as this one, it’d be easy to round it off with a relatively wearied closer. fortunately, that isn’t the case here. ground floor pulls out all the stops with ‘old habits’ – a well-deserved victory lap, which offers the ep’s most turbulent progression. lyrically, it carefully treads a fine line between the past and the present, with smith’s favourite line “You remind me of the past / tinted like the roses” acting as a reminder that “sometimes things can be blurry when you’ve been blinded by a romance.”
“the [project’s] four songs act as an honest reflection of how we’ve been feeling… familiar generational resentment and the realities of being a young person growing up in a big city,” internet cafe revealed in a press release, speaking directly to a generation of individuals who find solace within introspection; for most of them, the ep’s melancholic nature will most certainly ring true.
it’s quite evident that ground floor isn’t the kind of record to play it by the rulebook. if anything, it serves as a bold prologue to internet cafe’s inaugural chapter – a ten-minute journey fuelled by the triumphs and defeats of rummaging through the complexities of metropolitan life.
as for what’s next? well, it’s safe to say there’s no stopping them. according to imi and luke, you can expect “some summer dance pop anthems about heartbreak and relationships” in the near future. the duo also told echowave that they’re already working on a second EP, which is “almost finished” and “definitely pushes [their] sound into a more alternative electronic space.” now that is how you hit the ground running.
