This double feature comes to us all the way from the lands down under… Australia. When singer-songwriter StarAV stumbled upon Venice lockjaw’s music on SoundCloud and proposed an idea of a collaboration. The result is this sweet and sleepy little tune.
The first thing you’ll notice right away is an immensely compressed sound on the vocals and the guitars. While it does sound unflattering at first, as it seems to suck a lot of the soul out of the arrangement, it soon sets in and becomes a part of the sound. The composition is lush and mystical, based on a simple 2-chord part that was fingerpicked on an acoustic, then double-tracked. It does the part beautifully, without sounding overly simple or lazy, before growing and developing into further sections of the song. The voice on the second verse has a heavy and disruptive autotune effect on top which does the song a big disservice; even as autotune can be used in such a way for a certain artistic effect, I simply don’t think that it is fitting in this particular example.
A song that’s beautifully composed but modestly recorded and mixed. The final job manages to sound strongly unique and carries its own flavor. And for that it’s an enjoyable release and it makes me excited to hear what both of those artists will come up with next, hopefully with a more professional production job.