A buoyant, healthy mix graces our ears through Draumr’s latest drop ‘Halcyon Slumber’. Another stunner from Draumr, an artist whose name is starting to mean reliability with one gorgeous release after another.
Of course, Draumr is French, based in Paris, something one can easily enough surmise from the vocoder-processed vocals, eponymous with French indie-tronica, popularized by the legendary Air on their legendary Moon Safari, and carried over by a swathe of artists in the mere 24 years since its release, latest of which is our Draumr. Unlike Air, Draumr’s main spheres of influence are not just electronica, in spite of synth-heavy soundscapes and processed percussion.
Instead, in ‘Halcyon Slumber’ we find healthy traces of ambience and dream pop, witnessed in the catchy, airy vocal hooks, cloudy atmospheres with lush reverbs, and a litany of modulated guitar strums that hang gleefully in the air. Draumr is good in crafting visual sceneries with his sound design choices that often have entrancing effects and coupled with his loosely structured songwriting on ‘Halcyon Slumber’, and we end up with a jubilant, bright, and effervescent song that bounces freely from one part to another, never feeling strongly grounded to a verse or a hook.
Another enchanting release from a French artist whose moniker is the old Norse word for Dream, and what fitting name. ‘Halcyon Slumber’ is a dreamy breeze that’s light, soft, yet confident and charismatic.