Painlessly unwinding life’s mortal coil has never been so relaxing. Gizmo & Nick Hakim’s “Lift Me Up” takes the preachiness out of the classic “meaning of life” debate by introspectively soul-searching in a nonchalant jazzy daze. While Gizmo lays down a mild bassline, Nick Hakim embarks on a journey for existential fulfillment that doesn’t have an identifiable end. Hakim starts to wander around his mind dreaming about an imprecise safe haven somewhere outside of his current rut. Sentence after sentence, questions float by implying that today’s questions can only be found in tomorrow’s answers, as Hakim asks, “I wonder where I’ll go when I leave this crazy place. Where will my soul reside, and will I find happiness.”

Hakim’s grass-is-greener philosophy takes an interesting closure-less spin by relinquishing the quest for answers every time the chorus rolls through. Hakim yearns “Just lift me up from here!” to assert that no matter what the outcome, the reward will be worth adventure. The conclusion seems to draw near with an instrumental downbeat, but Gizmo throws in a strangely absorbing testament to his Hispanic Los Angeles roots in the song’s final minute. My broken translation skills identify that Spanish conclusion as saying the following: “Llevame contigo” (Carry me with you), “Sácame aquí” (Get me out of here), “Vámonos arriba” (Let’s go up). The most exiting part isn’t the sampled finish alone, but the fact that Gizmo created the entire piece with local friends in attempts to make it sound like a decades-old Spanish chorus. This communal recording can be found at 6:35 in the video linked here (not the embedded video below) – check it out.