If there’s one thing Igor Keller doesn’t believe in, it’s creative rest. Under his Longboat moniker, the Seattle-based composer and producer has quietly amassed a body of work that reads more like an underground encyclopedia of 21st-century discontent. His latest album, Word Gets Around, marks his 32nd full-length release—but don’t mistake that prolificacy for repetition. With its blend of bleak realism, brittle humor, and a minimalist pop architecture borrowed from his jazz days, Word Gets Around is a record that doesn’t just observe the chaos of modern life—it compresses it into melody.
Keller is at a point in his career where he’s unbothered by convention. His songs aren’t chasing playlists or radio rotation. They’re confrontations. “Yelltown,” a standout track, captures the sonic atmosphere of Belltown—Keller’s once-vibrant Seattle neighborhood now reduced to what he calls “downright dystopian.” It’s a grim lullaby for a city that’s lost its soul, sung with just enough empathy to make the noise around it unbearable.
Throughout Word Gets Around, Keller doesn’t lean on nostalgia or irony—his songs feel surgically modern. They document not just heartbreak or social malaise but the fractured reality of trying to stay human amid the rise of algorithmic living. His view on AI-generated music isn’t fearmongering—it’s prophetic. The idea that artificial songs will eventually provide the soundtrack to our most intimate moments isn’t just a warning; it’s a resignation.
And yet, for an artist so critical of the world he sings about, Keller still believes in the value of music as something handmade, something built from scratch with people you trust. He credits his college professor for instilling that ethos: make music with your friends. That philosophy shows—even in a mostly solo operation like Longboat, the humanity is never programmed out.
There’s also something strangely punk about the way Keller approaches the concept of a one-man band. No drama, no ego, no breakups. Just albums—eleven of them planned for 2025, with Word Gets Around as the first out of the gate. It’s the kind of productivity that would seem gimmicky if the music didn’t sound so deliberate. Longboat isn’t rushing. He’s documenting.
The production remains sharp and unfussy, echoing the stripped-back tradition of post-rock and synth-laced avant-pop, but always grounded in Keller’s early jazz instincts. He may not be playing the sax anymore, but the flexibility of jazz structure haunts every song’s DNA. There’s a looseness in form but a strictness in purpose—each track is a precise piece of a larger anxiety puzzle.
It’s tempting to call Word Gets Around an album for our times. But that undersells the scope. This isn’t just a record about now—it’s about what now has become. In a world where everything is recorded, posted, streamed, and remixed into forgettable content, Longboat insists on remembering. He insists on writing songs that think, that argue, that linger.