Hatif – Take The Bait

Hatif combines darkwave with oriental sounds

With ‘Take The Bait’, the Swedish band Hatif deliv­ers a dark blend of synth pop and dark­wave, which, with its ori­ent­al touch, imme­di­ately reminded me of clas­sics like Camouflage's ‘Love Is A Shield’, without rely­ing on a purely retro feel.

The song begins with a dark, dysto­pi­an atmo­sphere that envel­ops me like a heavy blanket. The bass in par­tic­u­lar imme­di­ately grabbed my atten­tion: sat­ur­ated, punchy and relent­less – a rhythm that leaves no room for doubt. And yet there is this emo­tion­al lay­er that nev­er let go of me des­pite the harsh­ness. It is this fra­gile bal­ance between mel­an­choly and resi­li­ence that I feel is essen­tial to the track.

The elec­tron­ics sound almost unique at times – weird and yet per­fectly arranged, so that I wondered how Hatif man­ages to con­jure up such a coher­ent sound­scape from this mix­ture. In par­tic­u­lar, the chan­ging rhythms and dis­tant vocals come togeth­er to cre­ate an over­all pic­ture that seems rest­less, but at the same time trig­gers a feel­ing of deep reflec­tion. For me, this song is a real high­light of the album ‘Small States’.

Listen to "Hatif – Take The Bait" on Spotify

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