"The Breeze (Nature of You)" by Wes Finch

The latest release from Wes Finch is another of those he's first sharing via the medium of Patreon

 "The Breeze (Nature of You)" is one which in very general terms might be filed under the sort of song he reserves his The Silver Wye project for in that technology plays more of a role than in some of his other areas of creativity.

 This time he includes the use of both a vocoder & drum machine along with a bass: which being the instrument he plays in WLDFLWRS provides somewhat of a connection to that side of his work. I can certainly speculate that playing it so much these days might have led him to explore its use as a primary compositional tool.

 The title I suppose tends towards the pastoral which informs so much of his work across his various bands and solo endeavours but that's pretty misleading.

 You may be aware of his love for the work of Cormac McCarthy and this from time to time results in a song: I think this is one such occasion. The theme of "The Breeze (Nature of You)" comes from playing around with dialogue from a filmed adaptation of one of his stories (which is sampled)  and so the tone is much more sombre than a guess based on the title would suggest.

 Against this is a balancing mood which generates from the playfulness of making it a gently oscillating piece tied together with the sort of mantra approach which he uses from time to time in his more experimental pieces. Partly dense & menacing, partly evoking the wide open spaces of the American West, the venture is successful (of course he knows what he's doing & how to bring structure & cohesion to disparate elements). I suppose it's more of a mood piece than a strict narrative (any of the latter probably comes from the source text) but he does this well too. Will it lead to a flurry of bass led singles? Who can tell? I think we all value a little inability to second guess the artists we admire the most.