Transient Thoughts 007 - S O A R E R - 私に返す

 

Transient Thoughts is a series of shorter reviews that capture my thoughts on a given album at a given time.  Most of these reviews have not had nearly as in depth of a look at my full reviews.  These thoughts are often formulated while walking through my neighborhood, and reflect how the album impacted me in those moments.  I hope you enjoy them.

 

It's strange what can occur when you take the songwriting principles of one genre and apply them to another.  Slushwave is known for long, drawn out compositions that take minutes to fully form their melodies and grooves, if they are there at all.  So when Soarer took those same principles and applied them to dreampunk a fascinating album was born.

The album is deceptively simple.  At any given moment there is at most a beat, lead instrumentals, and backing synth pads. All this is then put through a phaser to give the combination a hypnotic sway. None of this is new. In fact these are all staples of both Dreampunk and slushwave. What differentiates this album is how all these elements are used together and their interactions.

The record has a way of washing over the listener and infecting every bit of their consciousness. When I listen to it I’m often caught up in the slow but consistent progressions of the melodies and atmosphere.  

To call the shifts gradual would be doing them a disservice. The songs evolve in such a way that it’s exceedingly difficult to pick out exactly where a shift takes place. When taken in as a whole though, the end of the song is vastly different than the beginning.

Its not just the progressions, or just the beats, or just the atmosphere.  It's how they all work together that make this such a complete experience.  The beats - when present - have this deep rich tone to them.  Yet somehow sounding washed out.  Instead of trapping or overwhelming the music, they enrich it and make the whole album better for it.

The atmosphere is warm, welcoming, and has this irresistible sway to it.  It mixes with the beats and the melodies to create this irresistible oscillation to the music.  If I'm walking with  私に返す playing, I often find my pace to be set to the cadence of the music. 

Soarer has taken the hypnotic stylings of slushwave and created a dreampunk album out of it.  It has this irresistible allure to it that wraps the listener in its clutches and never lets go until the closing notes.  I would love to see him or other artists revisit this style in the future, but if this is the only entry into this hybrid genre then it certainly is a welcomed one.