John X Belmonte – Visitation

Subtle tension in the dark – a song that gets under your skin

When I hear Visitation by John X Belmonte, I feel like I'm walk­ing through a dark room where every sound has mean­ing and noth­ing is left to chance.

For me, the track is a shin­ing example of how dark wave and clear synth pop can be com­bined to cre­ate an oppress­ive, almost threat­en­ing atmo­sphere without get­ting lost in a fog of fuzzy sounds. The sounds seem sur­gic­ally placed, giv­ing the song an almost clin­ic­al cold­ness that I find extremely excit­ing. The track's intens­ity and dark men­ace remind me strongly of Straight Razor.

Belmonte's voice is deep, dark, and at the same time pleas­antly soothing—a com­bin­a­tion that works well for me because it breaks the emo­tion­al cold­ness of the song and subtly provides warmth. I find the play with con­trasts par­tic­u­larly suc­cess­ful here.

For me, “Visitation” lives above all through its details. Hidden between the main pas­sages are small sound effects and min­im­al vari­ations in tone that pre­vent the song from ever sound­ing mono­ton­ous. These subtle ele­ments are what make the song spe­cial for me – they main­tain the ten­sion and cre­ate a pull that I find almost impossible to resist.

Listen to "John X Belmonte – Visitation" on Spotify