Monday 12 November 2018

New Music: The Desert - Distract Me


The Desert, a Bristol based group formed from the song writing and production nucleus of Gina Leonard and Tom Fryer released their debut EP Playing Dead last year. However, it’s their latest track Distract Me that takes them to a higher level. Here Gina sings about knowing something isn’t right, and having to make a decision about it, but rather than doing so, trying and failing to lose oneself in distraction: “Distract me, so I get drunk, this heavy saturation, has left me sunk.”

Crafted from what sounds like undiluted magic, there’s something of the key artists from their home city such as Massive Attack and Portishead in the song’s sound. It embraces the same disquieting and claustrophobic beauty as those predecessors. Yet there are no hip-hop beats or dub grooves of those artists, instead you’ll find fragile late-night piano chords, ambient textures, soaring synths and some downcast beats that give the whole song a sense of shadowy menace. There is no verse or chorus as such, for this is a song beyond pop. It sounds like it’s glided in from the dead of night and frankly, Distract Me is bloody gorgeous.

The Desert - Distract Me

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