downtempo – Queen City Sounds and Art

Mark Weatherley Layers Downtempo Moods and Breakbeat Rhythms in “Yearn” to Convey Emotional Urgency of Feeling Like a Relationship at a Crossroads

Mark Weatherley, photo courtesy the artist

“Yearn” begins with great momentum and the vocals Mark Weatherley puts into the track while highly processed convey the aching emotions expressed. “I don’t want want to miss you like this” in the chorus sums up the mood of the song. It expresses the feeling like you do miss someone but when you feel like the relationship has ended or in significant flux leaving one or both people feeling confused and lost when that bond may be in peril. Desperate might be too strong a word but it approaches the exact energy of those moments of poignant uncertainty. The switch-up in percussion styles throughout the track is reminiscent of a mashup of early early 2000s breakbeat but the way the song is arranged it has great atmospheric resonance like a downtempo song but infused with a sense of emotional urgency. Listen to “Yearn” on Spotify and follow Mark Weatherley at the links below.

Mark Weatherley on Facebook

Mark Weatherley on Instagram

&Tilly and BlauDisS Elicit a Deep Sense of Existential Drift on Dream Pop Song “Chaotic Neutral”

Pulses of melody course through &Tilly and BlauDisS’s single “Chaotic Neutral” like drifting photons of tone, trailing in the field of hearing. In the music video the singer seems to be sitting in a bathtub and contemplating a moment adrift in a mood, in a state of being. The title of the song is perhaps a reference to the alignment in Dungeons & Dragons most motivated by impulse and being neither malicious or guided by a particular moral framework that one would identify as “good” it can be difficult to predict. But in real world terms it might encapsulate a sense of being adrift when most things that have anchored anything to values or a system of values has been eroded and you can easily get to a place in the mind when you start to wonder if anything has any inherent meaning and if anything is truly worth doing except what intersects with your mind in any given moment. Most thoughtful, sensitive people who may have once really believed in something only to have the foundation of that thing or set of principles supporting it undermined and discredited. This can be a cultural, societal, political, spiritual or interpersonal thing that was at the core of your sense of self and if you don’t have a solid sense of self separate enough from any of those things you can feel like it’s all nonsense even if for a short or extended period of time. The song’s gentle rhythms and melancholic moods suits a sense of disconnected yearning that remains when you’re not sure if anything matters but you can sometimes feel like you want something, anything, to resonate with you deeply. Watch the video for “Chaotic Neutral” on YouTube and follow &Tilly at the links below.

Girl Wilde Perfectly Expresses the Sound of the Disassociating Crashout of Romantic Disappointment on Glitch Pop Single “if love skips this lifetime, i’ll die in my room”

The title of Girl Wilde’s “if love skips this lifetime, i’ll die in my room” is appropriately melodramatic. It expresses the moment of aching, soul deep collapse of the psyche in reaction to unfulfilled yearnings, perhaps spurred by imagined or actual rejection, and the searing and gutting disappointment that can hit you hard when it feels like you had built up real feelings for someone that you felt were reciprocated only to find out that for whatever reason the situation wasn’t what you were hoping, to the point of belief, it would be. And the crashout into conviction that it’s never going to happen for you with enduring overwhelming feeling that you’re someone who is just going to give up until the next great, cosmic go around. The song is awash in afterglow melodies, stuttered and staggered, glitchy rhythms, vocals that are hushed and poignantly melancholically exhausted and at times processed into auto-tuned disassociation. It’s the kind of sound that makes sense when you’re trying to really feel out the moment in all its painful manifestations all at once to get through this moment you know will end but feels like it never will. Listen to “if love skips this lifetime, i’ll die in my room” on Spotify and follow Girl Wilde at the links provided.