Something steeped in humidity here actually turns out to be the perfect soundtrack to watching the snow fall (the UK is currently wrapped in a frosty Siberian weather front). The blissful soft snowflake sounds of the hank drum employed in this track by Indian artist Astaaq Ahmed aka The Earflower Experiment – tuned in the cheerful key of C, he tells us via email – ping and pong with a soothing pace and texture. ‘Pass(h)erby’ is like a panacea, a gorgeous weave of textures, the cradle of bristling rich percussion that arrives, the warm waves of synth that waft in resolutely, the sparkling deep-breath lead synths.
“While conceptualising this song, I was mostly concerned with trying to capture the essence of a constantly moving, fast-paced world,” says Astaaq. “There are things happening in our lives on a regular basis, but our stories, in the larger scheme of things, don’t have any impact on anyone but us. The world is blissfully ignorant of your happiness, anger, pains and sorrows, and it just keeps spinning.” And this track has that motion, the gently unrelenting beat that fades into a lullaby on a patchwork of chirruping night insects: the heartbeat of your panic and pain as ignored by the natural world. And how fine that is, how ok the world is even after tragedy, how this track comforts you.
- 🔔 This comes from The Earflower Experiment's An Anecdote EP, which Astaaq tells us "tries to convey the life cycle of a rather unfortunate relationship."
