“Gotta Do” by Allan Jamisen: A Rebellious Electro-Pop Survival Mantra.

Allan Jamisen turns out to be a man of many creative hats and costumes—a composer, a painter, a recording maverick—but always sticks to one goal: to express the raw beat of life in a song. In his new single, Gotta Do, he is deprived of comfort and artifice, and in the face of the powerful command, I must do what I must do. This is a phrase that was pronounced at one of the most challenging moments of his life, when he had to juggle between full-time employment, his ill mother who is nearing death, and an arduous love affair that is at once personal and universal. It is a journey Jamisen has taken his own way, born in the gospel, rock, avant-electro, and outsider artistry, and here everything converges in this monumental release.

Gotta Do perfectly combines soul searching with movement. Rudimentary, monotonous, the lyric,–I gotta do what I gotta do. She gotta do what she gotta do. We have to be what we are. Jamisen himself calls the track a reflection on how we wander in the uncertain world and how we have lost touch with our emotions. The music reflects such tension: the synth bed soothingly shifts to the pulse of a considered quietness into a pounding surge of rattling rhythms and club-ready energy. The sound is rooted in the minimalist spirit of The Normal’s “Warm Leatherette,” which Jamisen reinterprets through his own prism of electronic soul and introspection. The voice of his mother, barely audible but in the background, provides a very humane and vulnerable contrast to the polished production. The combination of electronic soul and the catchy tunes on this track, as one reviewer mentions, is unforgettable. The gut feeling is that the song turns into both prayer and dance—a personal statement and a universal beat.

When we arrive at the last hook and the song ends, we are given a bright depiction of how we, as artists, should be: not just as artists, but as someone who endures. Allan Jamisen has borrowed even the most straightforward of phrases and placed them in a context of life, love, loss, and survival, and encased them in a soundscape that is both convincingly modern and honest. For listeners who want a piece of electro-pop that neither shies away from existential questions nor stops one from dancing, this song works. It implies that the very act of doing, of persisting, creating, caring is itself a form of art. Back in a time when music tends to be cloaked in filters, Jamisen is unfiltered: he will do what he must do. And thus granting, so he granteth, us permission.

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