San Fran’s Blackbird Blackbird has slowly been cropping up all over the blogs this past summer and, as a result, amassed a sizable following. Armed with a trunk full of tracks, remixes, and collaborations — all released since April — this guy is quite the workaholic, and for anyone who follows his twitter feed, there seems to be no stop to the deluge of released material in the foreseeable future.
Even more shocking than Blackbird Blackbird’s prolificness is the quality: every single track is an auto-hit. The two most recently shared tracks, “Fade to White” and “Starlight”, are certainly no exception. With a foundation grounded in “chillwave” (god forgive the name), atmospheric, and bedroom pop, it’s really tough to nail down a proper descriptor for Blackbird Blackbird’s music. Thankfully, this diversity of sound is what sets his music apart from the unlistenable set of imitators. Both of the new tracks have an added layer of female vocals, provided by Emily Reo and Steph Thompson respectively, which definitely compliments the delicate sound of each song.
“Fade to White” is a beautifully constructed track whose phrasing gives it such fluid motion. Reo’s vocals are soft-spoken and placed more in the midground, achieving a delicate balance between being spotlighted and completely overlooked (if the listen wants, they can easily pick out the vox, or if they’d rather just be washed over by the music as a whole, they can do that too). Now “Starlight” is a completely different beast. If there was ever track that was made for the latter stages of a discotheque party, it’s this one. Thompson’s stretched out, whole-note heavy vocals are a perfect pair to the midtempo, woozy synth lines fluttering about around her.
You can download the two tracks below and, while you’re at it, head on over to Blackbird Blackbird bandcamp’s page for a more complete collection of songs (you might want to do it quite because it seems that bandcamp is a contentious issue with Blackbird Blackbird).
Blackbird Blackbird // Fade to White (ft. Emily Reo)
Blackbird Blackbird // Starlight (ft. Steffaloo)
