FADER PREMIERE
"Face With No Name" is a title that speaks volumes for New York-based singer-songwriter I/O. On the phone a couple days ago, he told me it came from a place of frustration; a feeling that his environment isn't as progressive as it could be, that people can still disappear beneath their visual identities. On email, he elaborated: "this song was inspired by a friend of mine whose life was tragically cut short. I felt that although we are in this era of so much free communication, there's still such a disconnect between most parts of society." The first track to be taken from I/O's second solo mixtape (following 2012's Isolation), "Face With No Name" is a beautiful cut of elegiac R&B that begs to not let another person become another statistic, with lyrics that deliver jolt after jolt to the gut: Put'm in a box, throw'm in a hearse / One man's destruction, another man's worth. Listen above, and don't forget I/O's name.