Sameli is a versatile artist from Helsinki, Finland, who typically creates folk-rock-esque music with warm textures and catchy hooks. This time, however, he released a fun experiment with the song “Kameli”. The song started out as a fun jingle to be used on his YouTube channel, but as with most experiments, the process of going through with it revealed a new and interesting sound for him, with electronic textures blending with the simple yet effective hooks he writes on electric guitar.
The result of this experimentation is a breath of fresh air to listen to because Sameli is just trying to put things together and making creative decisions based on what he believes sounds good at the moment, with no experience with electronic sounds, which naturally results in this exploratory sound that is interesting to listen to. The soundscape here is unique precisely because it is new territory for an already established artist. I’m particularly fond of how the song winds down halfway and builds back up. The blend of real bass and electric guitar performances with the almost overtly digital synthwave textures is fun to listen to, and the drums take a back seat to leave more space for the ethereal feel of those airy textures.
There’s also a backstory worth mentioning. “Kameli” translates to camel, and the name started as a playground taunt directed at Sameli as a kid. The jingle was originally just a bit of fun with his own name, but the camel metaphor eventually took on a life of its own, representing endurance and quiet strength. He even took a trip to Cairo and rode a camel to the pyramids to lean into it. It’s a small detail, but it adds something to the song knowing it came from that place. What started as a joke turned into one of the more genuinely interesting tracks he’s put out.