dark passenger_ – ‘a perverse sense of self’
The progression of a dark passenger_ song is impossible to anticipate; it might become a flourishing explosion of thunder, melt into a stream of liquid lava, or simply descend into a darkened dungeon of epic proportions. His music forms labyrinthine wanderings beyond convention and exclusive to those with time on their hands and creativity in their minds. Paradoxically, dark passenger_ manages to be deep and profoundly emotive while he hammers you relentlessly to the point of exhaustion. His new single ‘a perverse sense of self’ reaps his sensory qualities by attaching a rare philosophical depth to his expansive sound.
dark passenger_ has dedicated himself to making rule-breaking sound that is captivating and evocative. The single, ‘a perverse sense of self’, is a rapid, tightly sequenced, percussion-driven track filled with synthetic knocking, buzzing and growling. Yet, like the best of dark passenger_’s work, instead of these sounds coming off as robotic or cold, there is a constant shifting that breathes an organic living quality to the music.
In fact, the most surprising moments in dark passenger_’s releases are often these moments of sonic lucidity. Nearly every track has had them, when there’s that sense of an approaching conventionality, in spite of the impossibility to imagine what that would sound like in dark passenger_’s musical world. Everything feels distinctly open to possibility, powered by the emotion-giving lifeblood pulsating through the veins of each track. This latest single retains all of those qualities.
A bold and brazen composition, ‘a perverse sense of self’ sits somewhere between deeply introspective and wildly outspoken, programmed to communicate language patterns in coded musical textures and tones that require complex thinking for ordinary comprehension. Which is to be expected, as dark passenger_ is no ordinary electronic music artist. Though ‘a perverse sense of self’ has an underlying punishing vibe, it is totally captivating.
The music isn’t drastically claustrophobic, giving itself, and the listener, room to breathe, and to move. In reality, dark passenger_ allows you to settle into the track before twisting the aural screw, which he loosens and tightens along the way for emotive effect. dark passenger_ has spent the last year putting out the most thought-provoking instrumental music within dense, overwhelming packages. The single ‘a perverse sense of self’ continues that trend, albeit with a slightly more accessible nuance.
dark passenger_ has not abandoned the conventions of music. Rhythm, melody and song structure exist, but they do so on his own terms, and are almost always at the service of the mood and message the music is trying to convey. Instead of the complex instrumental contortions of his previous work, ‘a perverse sense of self’ leans much more on a foreboding and tense sense of atmospherics.
As shards of bursting synths are underscored by spacious but rippling percussion, dark passenger_ shows how he has pushed the edge of the electronic envelope by pulling his sounds around and deconstructing understood stylistics to make them something completely different. As you grow accustomed to dark passenger_’s sonic aesthetics, greater meaning is gained from his songs. This time around, with ‘a perverse sense of self’ he has made that task a whole lot easier.
