first, listen to the song:

Allow yourself to get lost in the anciently futuristic world that RŌHKI has built for us with Lạc Đà. Melt into the cinematic string and piano arrangement, let it build up inside you. Let the echoes of past civilizations flow through you. Let the molding of an oriental violin turned into a Darbuka-like middle eastern drum and the simplicity of a classical guitar played just right transport you through space and time to a deserted dune landscape. In here, we are all camels.

Lạc Đà is the latest release from RŌHKI, an anonymous onchain music collective redefining the fundamentals of music distribution. A multimedia project at its core, RŌHKI has already delivered in one season what most independent musicians would aim to release in years: 10 songs, 5 animated story-based music videos, a 20 min animated short film, and more. Most importantly, they have managed to create their own universe. Equal parts anime, AI, mystery, existential crisis, distorted western modern pop vocals, synth-led electronic dystopias, and introspective story-telling, RŌHKI has a clear vision and a clear shot at becoming a unique expansible brand ecosystem sitting in the middle of the user-created-and-owned content and media world we are transitioning into.

RŌHKI is leading the path in these unexplored dunes, creating a blue-print for anonymous onchain collectives and at the same time showing why this model makes sense for others to emulate and improve on. Anonymous music collectives are not new. All the way from The Residents, who wore eyeball helmets and top hats in the ‘70s to hide their identities, to Gorillaz and Marshmello, artists have used collective anonymity to let the music speak for itself, as a branding strategy, to maintain multiple identities, or to expand their art into other mediums by incorporating members skilled in areas beyond music. Onchain collectives are also not new, at least not in the onchain world where weeks seem like years. It is the combination of both that makes RŌHKI worth paying attention to. The anonymous piece allows them to create a scaled multi-media project with many minds behind it that focuses on the art not the people, while the onchain piece gives them a direct connection with their collectors that transforms collectors into active participants and (hopefully) owners.

The two-minute-long intro that takes us from movie soundtrack to a trance-enducing rhytmic beat comes to an end as a powerful echoed voice breaks in. Although the words get lost at times in the distortion, we are visually and melodically placed in a world of ancient pyramids and star gazing. The song’s piano theme with the long violins and their surrounding echoes leave us wondering what is coming next in our camel journey, and all of a sudden we are lifted up out of nowhere. Like arriving in a desert oasis rave, the electronic section comes on and we are violently shaking our heads with a stank face on, forgetting that it was only seconds ago when we were out in the desert. There’s a certain comfort in getting engulfed by a wall of sound. This section is almost as unexpected as the reason why this song was created in the first place.

Lạc Đà, meaning camel in Vietnamese, is a tribute to RŌHKI’s largest collector base - Camel Ventures and its self-prescribed “music cult”. Camel Ventures is already an onchain music powerhouse, supporting various onchain artists in strength. To put it into perspective, Camel ventures and its mostly pseudonymous South East Asian collector army are the #1 Sound collector in the last 30 days when added together (~5.3 ETH), outspending the 2nd collector by ~150% and Coop Records by over 200%. Camel Ventures is also onchain music’s largest all time curator, driving almost 30 ETH (~$48,000) of mint volume through their referral links, nearly 3 times as much as Rae Isla’s Rocks currently in second place. For RŌHKI, the camels (Camel Ventures and anyone with a camel emoji next to their name, which is likely undercounting) have minted 2,000 out of their 8,000 sold editions, or ~25% of all of their mints (Sound doesn’t show collector by volume for specific artists yet). According to them, the name Camel Ventures comes from RŌHKI’s first song “Desperado”, a modern western. Isn’t it something - two pseudonymous collectives, the artists and the collectors, existing in a profound symbiotic relationship. The camels would not exist without RŌHKI, and RŌHKI does not succeed without the camels.

This connection is also in part what makes Lạc Đà the best song in RŌHKI’s catalog. To honor their collectors, RŌHKI delivered a sonic experience that is connected to the collector’s ancestry, and with that likely turning many of their collectors into fans. Quickly selling out 1,000 editions in a bear market is no small feat, and RŌHKI did it seamlessly for Lạc Đà in large part thanks to the relationship it is building with the camels. Camels also had a say in the song’s supply and price through a community vote, further building on that artist↔collector relationship. By trying out new sounds and melodies (they utilize a C# Phrygian Major scale for this song, commonly used in oriental songs), they gave us a wide-ranging adventure that perfectly matches the song’s intent and story, which has not always been the case in RŌHKI’s past songs.

The electronic section is delicately turned back into a verse, but it’s not too long until we find ourselves dancing again when the song builds from its main theme into what we can only call cinematic oriental drum & bass. Lạc Đà leaves us with a reminiscing of main theme and a desert whisper in a foreign language that feels like it is telling us a long-lost secret. We don’t know what the secret is, but, if we had to guess, it would be that RŌHKI is here to stay and that this is just the start for anonymous onchain music collectives. We are excited to see where RŌHKI goes with their next Season, and how they continue to strengthen and transform the artist↔collector relationship, hopefully also expanding the boundaries of ownerhship and co-creation. In the midst of our transition into a mostly digital world, RŌHKI and the Camels show us that our digital existence doesn’t have to be a dystopian, 1984-y nightmare. Anonymous onchain collectives can create new models for supporting artists, experimentation, ownership and sustainability that lead us into the new collective creation era.

musicurator

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Date of mint: August 17th, 2023

Mint details: 0.01 ETH, 1000/1000 minted

Current price: 0.0189 ETH on Sound Market