There is a moment near the end where the beat drops out entirely and leaves just a voice and a single held synth, and that gap is where coastline actually lives. Dominic Donner builds the track around loss, the parenthetical “what’s left of me” doing a lot of heavy lifting before a note even plays, and the music mostly earns the melodrama. It is melodic electronic in the emotional-release tradition, a big wistful build aimed squarely at the part of you that goes quiet on long nights. The vocal is processed until it sits somewhere between human and instrument, which keeps the sentiment from curdling into something you would skip. What saves it from the thousand identical sad-boy electronic tracks is the restraint in the arrangement, the way it holds back the full wash until you have waited long enough to want it. When the drop finally opens up, it feels like relief rather than spectacle. Donner presses one specific nerve and presses it cleanly. It is sad and small and precise, and some nights that is the only thing you actually want on.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.