
The intricate guitar work of Paul Spring’s “Beetle on a Blade” fits well with the delicate flute work and the brisk pace of the track. The simple rhythm and percussion feels like the kind of pace one might count out for a campfire song if that campfire crowd included Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The song also has a quality that sounds like something one might expect to hear on a soundtrack to a movie about a medieval minstrel or troubadour. The lyrics seem to be a meditation on the nature of life cycles and cosmological time and how they intersect and influence each other as well as the precious fragility of existence as made poetically real to one by little details that strike one in moments when you have the time to consider deeper meanings beyond surface level experiences. As acoustic and organic as the music sounds its interesting to note that the pulsing beat is likely generated by an 808 rather than a traditional drum suggesting that the mathematical backdrop to the structure of the universe as we experience it interconnects the rhythms of music and the frequency of existence itself. Listen to “Beetle on a Blade” on YouTube and connect with Spring, collaborator with Mary Lattimore, Blackthought, Sasami and Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes as well as serving as lead singer of Holy Hive, at the links below. Spring’s album Thunderhead of which “Beetle on a Blade” released on December 16, 2022.

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