Clean Beast – Darkness

Between darkness and danceability: A personal look at “Darkness”

The intro comes with a dark, almost sto­ic, mono­ton­ous bass beat. To my ears, it sounds unusu­al at first – no sud­den effects, no dra­mat­ic build-up. Instead, an elec­tron­ic web slowly spreads out, becom­ing clear­er, more struc­tured and more excit­ing with each lay­er. What grabbed me right away was the deep, almost mourn­ful vocals. They don't sound arti­fi­cial, but strangely sooth­ing, almost famil­i­ar – as if someone were quietly telling you about a place you've vis­ited before.

What I find excit­ing is that although the song has a cer­tain mono­tony to it from the start, the mood changes subtly with each new sec­tion. It remains dark, but not life­less. The sound­scape becomes increas­ingly bright­er without ever los­ing its under­ly­ing mood – and at some point, almost imper­cept­ibly, Darkness even becomes danceable.

I'll be hon­est: for me, this isn't a revolu­tion in synth pop or dark wave. But that's not what it's sup­posed to be. For me, Darkness is a sol­id track when I want to switch off – a song that doesn't shout loudly, but tells a story with subtle details. Sure, there's room for improve­ment, espe­cially in terms of vari­ation. But still: Clean Beast shows here that some­thing beau­ti­ful can emerge even from darkness.

Listen to "Clean Beast – Darkness" on Spotify

Listen to "Clean Beast – Darkness" on Bandcamp