T.O.L.D.

There’s mysticism at work with The Order of Life and Death — T.O.L.D. — weaving through the esoteric songwriting of producer Daniel Smith. Innate in the religious synths, steel drums and sweeping melodies of his savvy trance anthems, he conjures an incorporeal honesty through divine composition and clear-eyed verse, thematically exploring man’s insecure morality.

The 24-year-old British transplant to Los Angeles has been experimenting with pop music since prepubescence, self-releasing and collaborating throughout his years in the Birmingham and London underground scenes. Well acquainted with standard pop songs, as T.O.L.D. he’s developed his perspective and has found liberation with a canvas so often distinguished by the banal and cliché.

“Pop is a tool,” he says. “It’s a frame in which I can create and I’ve found the frame keeps getting bigger.”
Philosophers Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Wittgenstein’s influence falls alongside the production of DJ Sammy and Tupac-collaborator Johnny J, but in translation as much as T.O.L.D.’s music reimagines epic tones of ’90s hits, it too follows in a legacy of spiritual transcendence. And here, his song — as many have found in hymns, chanting, or the meditative repetition of mantras before — leads to abreaction.

“I tend to separate my music from my thinking,” he says. “It’s a more pure emotional release, rather than an intelligent one. There’s a place for all that thought; song is a better channel for expression than explanation.”