Blackwave Share New Single ‘Recluse’
Belgian duo Blackwave are back with their first single of 2021, Recluse, out via Virgin Music.
The Antwerp-based rapper Jay Atohoun and singer-producer Willem Ardui deliver here a memorable and groovy piece of music that won me over from the start. I am loving those luscious vocals, especially the falsetto, and how they flow beautifully over the captivating production. Recluse is an introspective song about love and loss wrapped around a 70's soul-inspired production with killer guitar plucks, gorgeous brass, steady beat and overall warm atmosphere.
Speaking about the song, the duo said,
While the process of making ‘recluse’ started about two years ago, the content of it is as relevant as ever to us. It encompasses a lot. Among other things it’s about feeling isolated, it’s about love and loss, it’s about looking inward and trying to understand yourself. These are themes we were dealing with prior to the pandemic, but came to the surface even more during all of it. We worked on the song restlessly for the last months, ever changing the arrangement, redoing vocal recordings, reharmonizing different parts… It was a journey. Sound-wise we were really inspired by 70’s soul like Curtis Mayfield and Al Green. Listening to those records made us experiment with different recording and mixing techniques like sending the drums through vintage tape and echo machines to get that warm, retro sound.
This cool song is accompanied by a beautiful music video, directed by Michiel Venmans and Jaan Stevens, which perfectly embodies the song's message and atmosphere. Check it out below!
Speaking about the video, Blackwave said,
The video by Michiel Venmans and Jaan Stevens represents everything we reflect on in the song in a perfect way. You can interpret it in various ways, and we don’t want to fill in the meaning of it too much, but what they captured with these visuals is that feeling of isolation, the uncertainty of what is going to happen, the intricacies and difficulties of love, the recognizable feeling of being too much in your own head…