A New Single from Art Schop
A new single release from Art Schop delivers a very descriptive approach with robust lyrics that paint these pictures you could see in your head as the song plays on and unfolds, which is quite a beautiful experience because the song itself has this sort of calming folk undertone to it all.
"Katharina" is a beautifully constructed song that sort of grows a little bit as it plays on. Once you get halfway through the song, you start to feel a build in the soundscape, and more instruments come into play, giving the song a vaster and more cinematic tonality as well.
The track is a folk song, but it also beckons this sort of Americana approach because its rhythm has a slight swing. It's focused around acoustic guitar and vocals, but as the song plays on, you start to hear these bells, which remind you of bands from the '60s and '70s. Then, more instruments open up later on in the track, and you fall into this dreamlike atmosphere.
The whole thing has a subtle beauty to it, and you find yourself drawn into those lyrics and the story behind them, along with all the detailed and descriptive approaches that are displayed. These are the things that let the song come through almost like a chapter of a book that you are reading.
I love this aspect of it because very few and far between do you get a kind of song that feels that rich with character and detail.
The instrumentation has such a gorgeous set of textures. As I mentioned earlier, by the time you get to the second half of the song, you have these layers of instruments that come in with those acoustic guitars and vocals and these all really showcase the artist's ability to build a song that has a growth to it and can pull you alongside that growth.
There's a beautiful and natural, forward-moving flow to this track that is seamless. To me, it was very cinematic simply because you can easily pick up on the emotional backbone and how you can easily picture this track in the scene of a film.
This was a track that had a natural way of wrapping itself around me and keeping me right where it wanted. You find yourself floating along in that atmosphere, and as you drift with it, you realize that it's pulled you into this alternate reality, and it does so again, in the same way a book or a film would.
You end up paying attention to the words, but you're pulled in by the mood of the music.
"Johannes Kepler, German astronomer, mathematician, natural philosopher and writer on music, was the son of Katharina Kepler – midwife, herbalist, and astrologer. Her reputation was tenuous. Some accused her of witchcraft. Johannes knew his mother as the wise, mysterious figure who understood the stars and the music of the universe. And although Kepler, a man of science, adhered to rational beliefs, he too succumbed to the magic of imagination and mystery. He proposed that the motions of the planets influence everything that happens on earth, including misery and famine.
Although it is ostensibly about Katharina Kepler, this song has always felt very personal to me. I too pride myself on my rationality, but have a weakness for the mysterious and magical. The line in the song “He was a soldier of fortune, left as the evening fell” reminds me of my grandfather (who I never knew): An army officer, he abandoned my grandmother and their young family because she had a stroke after an allergic reaction to aspirin. The song connected me for the first time to my grandfather through the story of Kepler’s father, who abandoned his mother, then died in a tulip field in the Netherlands" - Art Schop
The vocals also have this subtlety to them at first so that you're paying more attention to the lyrics, but they get more intense as the song unravels. By the time it gets to the end, the vocals are more robust and again, intensified.
They are recorded as two tracks, and I think this adds to the aesthetic of what the song is giving off.
They come across as a great set of layers, adding to the feel and vibe of the track.
This was an excellent single, and as far as we can tell, may be part of an upcoming record out later this summer.
We should know more about that soon, but for now, this trip will certainly hold us over.
Listen to this track with some headphones on so you can really take in everything it has to offer.
