downtempo – Queen City Sounds and Art

Mark Weatherley’s Ever-Evolving Downtempo Single “Petrichor” is Like the Soothing Soundtrack to Transitional Seasons

Mark Weatherley, photo courtesy the artist

The beats in Mark Weatherley’s “Petrichor” shouldn’t work. The breakbeats start and stop, seem to change directions, pick back up and yet it all fits together like a moving puzzle with the harmonic and melodic motes of sound arranged so that the song constantly has an evolving and effervescent atmosphere. Like the direct experience of late spring weather when the environment hasn’t seemingly decided how it’s going to be except moment to moment. Weatherley captures as best a person can these micro-changes in mood and texture and fit that into the format of a song. There are no immediate touchstones but in the multitude of moments employed in the song one can hear peeps of late-90s Moby, sampled organic percussion and layers of luminous haunted sounds that drift through but soothe rather than startle. And then the song is over. What sets it apart from a good deal of electronic music is that the repetition never fully feels like it because Weatherley’s arrangements are so detailed and ever-shifting without feeling jarring and at worst merely disorienting in a way that feels comfortable. Listen to “Petrichor” on Spotify and follow Mark Weatherley at the links provided.

Mark Weatherley on Facebook

Mark Weatherley on Instagram

“All on Black” is evrshde’s Deeply Moody Downtempo Song of Solidarity for Those Suffering Through Dark Times of the Psyche

“All on Black” finds evrshde in a fully somber mood. Like a brooding combination of the darker end of Fiona Apple and the more piano-driven side of Nine Inch Nails but infused with a downtempo jazz energy. There is a great spaciousness to the song even as it sounds like the late night musings of someone who felt like they took a lot of risks and none of them feel like they paid off and it’s beyond bitterness and rallying to do better in the future. It’s the sound of feeling that moment of utter defeat completely because to do otherwise would be dishonest and an excuse for false hope leading to delusional behavior. It’s a hard place to be but the song and its ethereal synth melody drifting through personal darkness with the weight of yes personal demons but those fed on a sense of crushing failure compounded by the knowledge that being who you are with your own foibles is what lead here. But then what? The song implicitly puts that question out there and leaving any ultimate conclusions what comes next. The line “The pain’s the only reason you know you’re still alive” is most telling for anyone that has sunk that deep into murky psychological recesses and worse and struggled to come out of it because that level of depression doesn’t feel like pain but a seemingly endless nothingness, a personal emotional nullification and the capacity to still feel something at all is a reminder that you’re still around and often it’s just getting through these seemingly hopeless expanses of spiritual grayness is matter of having patience and doing regular life activities that might in the moment feel meaningless. The song thankfully doesn’t sound like a reflection of that headspace so much as expresses a solidarity with anyone who might also be similarly suffering. Listen to “All on Black” on Spotify and follow evrshde at the links below.

evrshde on Facebook

evrshde on Instagram

Strange Fruit’s IDM Shoegaze Single “Monopolar” is Like a Mood Window Into Late 90s Underground Music Hopefulness

Strange Fruit, photo courtesy the artists

“Monopolar” by Jakarta, Indonesia’s Strange Fruit eases into motion with hazy harmonics and swelling and resolving textures and tones. The mood is like a downtempo band that got deep into blissed out shoegaze psychedelia. Yes, there is guitar but the whole songwriting aesthetic is more like electronic music and fans of Seefeel, Black Moth Super Rainbow and the more experimental end of Verve will appreciate the most. It’s like a musical break from the overwhelming turmoil of world events which we could all use a little bit of now. It feels like what the late 90s did in the underground music world with a sense of mystery and an ambient hopefulness. Watch the entrancing video for “Monopolar” on YouTube and follow Strange Fruit at the links below. The group’s latest EP Drips, its first release after about a decade-long hiatus, drops April 3, 2026 via Gentle Tuesday Recordings.

Strange Fruit on Instagram

Strange Fruit on Bandcamp

Sasha & The Bear Create a Space to Lean Into One’s Feelings of Emotional Abandonment on Downtempo Dream Pop Single “Peaches”

Sasha & The Bear, photo courtesy the artists

Sasha & The Bear display a command of mood and pace on “Peaches.” The warm and intimate vocals are reflective and soulfully melancholic are framed initially by a soft synth melody before the minimal beat comes in and backing vocals augment the sense of loss and emotional pain at feeling left abandoned by someone with whom you felt you had a connection and a bond stronger than something casual. The confusion and hurt in the final lines of the song “you said it wasn’t me/but I watched you choose” is familiar to anyone that has ever experienced being abruptly dumped without fully knowing why by someone who may have their own demons to tangle with but who is lacking the psychological self-awareness and appropriate language to articulate why they have to leave a relationship that doesn’t seem to be toxic. The masterful use of texture, the tonal richness and the duo’s expert crafting or rhythm feels like processing a deep sadness and giving oneself the psychic space to really lean into one’s feelings without having to hold back or be overwhelmed by them. Listen to “Peaches” on Spotify and follow Sasha & The Bear at the links provided.

Sasha & The Bear on Apple Music

Sasha & The Bear on Twitter

Sasha & The Bear on TikTok

Sasha & The Bear on Instagram

Sasha & The Bear on YouTube

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

“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.