Local Review: Pigimichi — Old Quarters

Pigimichi
Old Quarters
Plastic Honey
Street: 05.15.25
Pigimichi = Stevie Wonder x Kitty Craft

Many of the far more perceptive readers among you may notice how a lot of the local records we’re reviewing are not exactly “fresh-off-the-press,” if you will. The truth is, we’ve built up quite the backlog of local music to review, which means two things: First, the scene is growing at an ever-increasing rate. This is magnificent for local music, and I am proud to be part of this little moment Salt Lake City is having. Second, this spectacular increase in Salt Lake music has outpaced our ability to review them, so we’ve been catching up. One such record from the backlogs is Old Quarters by Pigimichi, a group which I wish had gotten the “Disney FastPass” from our staff last May, as this record is spectacular!

Formed in 2016, experimental synth pop group Pigimichi found themselves hopping between Salt Lake City and SoCal playing clubs and small venues. Old Quarters was produced in this relatively turbulent time between 2017 and 2025. Most of the sessions occurred during the pandemic with trumpet player David Aguila behind the console across three recording locations, and Collin Davis mixing at Stones Throw in Los Angeles. It’s a recording approach akin to Fantastic Planet by Failure, and it shows: You get some stellar studio polish on incredibly raw and honest recording takes, and the resulting sound is something earnest and sincere. It’s a rather daunting task to surmount when your sound is so synthesizer-heavy, but accomplished quite well here.

Each track flows into the next in a trance. It’s like psilocybin at a rave; everything is so precise and coordinated and then given a splash of color that causes a sort of artificial drift in the mind. Each instrument flows and meanders into the other while walking in lockstep. This is the sort of technique that keys player Jonny Stallings Cárdenas seems to excel at on this record. He really leans into the advantages of analog synths here. Just listen to “Bob Picks Berries” featuring a Minimoog and a Moog Matriarch. Each synth invokes a rather deliberately programmed off-kilter-ness, providing a very diverse sound on the track, moving from the honest to the alien within incredibly tight tolerances.

Even more diverse yet is Steven Stallings Cárdenas’ drumming, which switches genres and signatures on the fly. “Arches,” for instance, has this Truba-disco beat driving the rhythm. It quickly takes shape as the most driving song on the record, bouncing through the time signature. Then there are tracks like “Tahitian Poster Dream,” which maintains a stereotypical organ bossa nova preset that moves into a more calypso type of beat. It is one of the more relaxing tracks displayed here and demonstrative of Cárdenas’ diversity.

Then there’s Kiki LaPomme’s vocals and bass guitar from Omar Lopez, which serve to take the out-of-this-world instrumentation and really ground it back in reality. I would use the adjective “childlike” here as a compliment to describe LaPomme’s singing, if nothing else, to illustrate the innocence and sincerity within. It’s an adjective that I think is definitive of the majority of this record in that sense.

So the verdict? It is weird as hell but easy to embrace, and in my mind, indicative of a further trend occurring within music pop culture: a shift from grandiosity to something far more genuine. There’s something to be said about the masterclasses in talent that musicians like Prince or Elvis display, but as far as I’m concerned, Prince and Elvis aren’t even real people. They’re characters. They’re action movie heroes. The Billboard 100 similarly is a hit list of extraterrestrials. Each person there payola’d their way to the top with tracks algorithmically manufactured by teams of lawyers and public relations teams to be as listenable and universally liked as possible. There’s no humanity in that sort of music. So in that sense, I believe rather firmly that a shift toward the experimental is in order; to deliberately attempt to be sonically alien and detached from reality is the most human thing that a musician can do, and in that sense, I find myself concluding that Pigimichi’s Old Quarters is all too human. You can reach out, shake its hand and see the wrinkles in its smile.

Pigimichi’s Old Quarters is available on all streaming platforms, but not in a physical format as of writing. CD and vinyl collectors jonesing for Pigimichi will be pleased to hear that their previous works, Empty House EP and Santa Rosa, are available on vinyl and CD respectively. —Ezra Smith

Read more local reviews here:
Local Review: Sunny Day Soap Opera-Sunny Day – SLUG Magazine
Local Review: Renée Mackin — The Bluest Bird – SLUG Magazine

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