Longboat Returns with New Sounds and Stories

Longboat, also known as Igor Keller, has always been an artist who notices the strange, the overlooked, and the beautifully absurd. A perfect example for that is his song “Yelltown.” Although the Seattle neighborhood he references (also known as Belltown) is loud, chaotic, and bursting with personality, Keller chose to write a surprisingly quiet, and sad lullaby about it. As he joked on Instagram, “When I’m in Seattle, I live in Yelltown. Yes, the place is exactly what it sounds like, so I wrote a quiet song about it.”

The lyrics paint a picture of a place where noise is the currency of daily life. Full-throated shouts, rants echoing down the street, and a constant soundtrack of city chaos all become part of the track. However, with typical Longboat wit, he delivers these scenes with a calm tone, almost as if he’s whispering a loud story. That contrast is what makes the track feel so alive and interesting.

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Longboat also likes to share the piano versions of his songs on his social media. Lately he posted his song “Autonomous Crashing” on Instagram, admitting that nostalgia brought him back to the piece. Originally part of his 2017 album E(Minus), the stripped-down performance shows how comfortable he is revisiting every corner of his catalog, even as he continues moving forward at full speed.

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And moving forward is something Longboat does better than most. Once a jazz tenor saxophonist in Seattle, Igor Keller shifted into film scoring before landing in his true creative space: experimental pop. He writes about everything except love: technology, politics, peculiarities of everyday life, because, as he says, there’s an entire universe of subjects waiting to be explored. Across more than 30 albums, he has carved out his own lane filled with electronic blues, social commentary, and sharp humor.

That sense of exploration guides his latest album as well, The Merry Blacksmith’s Song Bucket, released October 31. The album opens with “Monster Zero,” a track inspired by the Godzilla universe. The song blends jazz-infused pop, electronic textures, and a surprise ending saved by an unexpected instrument.

Whether Longboat is capturing the chaos of Yelltown or reshaping sci-fi into song, he continues to build worlds that are strange, clever, and original.