“Get ready for some serious funk pop,” Asher Condit playfully told me before sending over his new song, “Don’t Fool Me Now”. And today, we are so excited to premiere that track, which serves as both a reinvention and a reintroduction to Condit’s work. If you’ve kept up with what we do at ctverses, you’ve no doubt heard some of his stuff — you just may not have realized it! As the owner/engineer behind Kingship Recording Company, Condit has worked with a ton of Connecticut artists, including some of our favorites (looking at you, Melanie Champagne, Kurita, and Skit Nite). In the past, he’s released experimental/indie pop music under the name Pushing Static (which playfully just released a final song with the parenthetical title “the end”), but “Don’t Fool Me Now” changes all of that.
asher [no capitals] is the new pop project for Condit, and it takes a more definitive pop approach. He may have teased “serious funk pop”, but I think he meant “wildly fun funk pop”. “Don’t Fool Me Now” is a sunny, slick pop gem, laden with beautiful production and fat synths. The song is about the uncertainty that comes with falling in love, and while that might sound like some Shakespearean melodrama, this song is just so fun that it’ll put a big goofy grin on your face. [source: my face right now]. You can expect more songs from asher this year.
Condit’s knack for melody is recognizable from his Pushing Static recordings, but “Don’t Fool Me Now” is also a showcase for the techniques and theory that asher frequently shares online. His videos, both on instagram but especially on TikTok (with >19k followers!), are incredibly entertaining and informative. He talks a lot about music form, style, and recording, breaking it down but never dulling the fun magic that comes from songwriting. It’s for that reason that I was so curious to see what asher’s music would be like (in the same way that I was curious about other famous engineer’s solo work, like Dave Sitek, Steve Albini, or John Congleton). And like his own advice, “Don’t Fool Me Now” is well-informed by the science of music recording, but it keeps — and shines — the magic of it.
