forget about me – Nathaniel Earl (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Atmosphere is, perhaps as much as the musical elements themselves, a key ingredient to “forget about me,” this fourth single from Nathaniel Earl’s debut EP, What Follows What Remains. Not exactly an ambient piece, but certainly music made where such a sound washes up on a more delicate, indie-pop shore. A heady combination of grace and accessibility, melody and melancholy.

Gentle piano lines merely sketch out the outline of a song, perhaps not even a song, a feeling, a thought, a musing, a heartache, between which gentle flows of hazy sonics and subtle string washes are allowed to ebb and flow, creating not so much melody, more a kaleidoscope of beguiling sound, an ever-shifting sonic haze.

It’s a song built on both analogue and digital sounds, synthesized sonics and elegant electronica, the traditional and the forward thinking, proof that in the right hands, the two worlds not only co-exist but are perhaps essential if the creative wheel is to remain in motion and guarantee new futures.

It also offers a new approach to the music experience. This is less music to be listened to, understood and appreciated in the traditional sense, more music that you need to let wash over you, allow it’s subtle and subliminal nature to cocoon you; it is an experience as much as it is art, music that you need to absorb through some form of sonic osmosis rather than merely sample and process in the normal sense.

Subtle, seductive, sensuous, and sad. Not to mention sensational…if such understated music can indeed be described in such grand terms.

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