"Long Road Home" by Bygrave

Out today is the new (Dan) Bygrave single "Long Road Home".

The follow up to "Friday Night", this one is a co-write with Ryan Stanley and like its predecessor was produced by Wigz for Beat Rebel Records.

Starting with a frankly bold backwards section (which certainly grabs the attention, though to be fair, while many experiments in this direction can be a bit random in effects, this one has an interesting beauty of its own: which I imagine is why they used it).

Like its immediate predecessor,  this one tends to the reflective and melancholic and could even be seen as a narrative sequel to the earlier single.

Where I do think Bygrave scores is his developing mastery of slow, spacey rap influenced vocals over suitably mellow & vibed beats: most music of this style seems to go for faster delivery so that the effects of the rhyming & rhythms are accentuated with a machine gun, aggressive effect. Here he manages to be effective at a much slower pace, savouring the words (and there are some interesting vocabulary choices here to pick up on more easily & then ruminate on): I'd have thought that technically this was more difficult than the standard form.

The other point is how downbeat the themes of most of his released tracks to date are: he comes across as deep thinker on the cusp of possibly over thinking things: if this is an accurate self portrait of his take on like, then one worries about how familiar he might be with depression. Alternatively of course, he may just be trying to capture thoughts & ideas without necessarily experiencing any or all of them himself: good artists after all are sensitive to what they observe on others as well as looking deep within themselves. Not all songs need to be autobiographical…

Whichever theory is nearer the truth, Bygrave is now developing a strong artist identity which is characterised by the confidence to be his own man & not to simply use the work of others as a template for his own.