Music Review for “Falling” by Jonathan Ian Clarke

This track features an incredibly unusual selection of instruments and chord progressions. The sounds seem to create a sort of dissonance among one another, and when the vocal comes in the effect is further enhanced. The effects used are also quite overwhelming, the result is that it distracts you from the song, so any meaning is a little lost the first time you listen. It’s difficult to make out a lot of the lyrics, but to listen to the track as a whole piece, it’s value seems to lie in the expression of the music as a single entity. If you consider it as an individual and completed piece of art, it seems to have similarities with a lot of music that follows this sort of glitchy pathway – Aphex Twin perhaps, or even some of the more experimental tracks from Radiohead.

The experimental element has been taken to the extreme here, yet behind all of it you do still get that vocal melody caught in your mind a little. There’s a significant thread that continues until the song is over, and despite the introduction of new sounds and effects, unexpected turns and moments, the song becomes familiar in the way that any song using a more standard structure would. The unusualness has it’s place and it’s power, this particular track has a certain haunted ambiance to it, which could mean it would be well placed among a particular set of visuals, or perhaps a movie.

It’s mesmerizing to listen to the track in full. The sounds fill up any remaining space around the vocal, so there’s no room to think your own thoughts or pass judgement, you’re just essentially guided along by the music – you actually do feel as if you’re falling at times. That’s a pretty clever style to have down, and it could make for a very addictive sound for new audiences.

By Rebecca Cullen