After racking up over three million streams for the energetic ‘Young Like Me’, Australia’s EDM wonder kid Black Summer (aka Rhys Toms) returns in 2018 with the contextual chiller ‘Sadness’, featuring Bahamian vocalist Chloe Campbell. This release sees the 14-year-old further exemplify maturity in his production beyond his years.
As the track begins, Black Summer moves into a secondary role at first and gives Campbell the central focus to inject the emotional context into the soundscape. He achieves this perfectly through swooping gated synths in the background, and further heightens the intensity within the mix with a sharpness in the percussion that pierces through. Once the chorus hits through a gradual build, Black Summer doesn’t choose to smack you in the face with an emphatic drop, and rather progresses down a more contemplative pathway filled with a boosted presence of bass.
The accompanying video, directed by Tim Maxx, is quite the visual eye-candy through its multiple worldwide settings. Starring both Black Summer and Chloe Campbell, the video depicts both characters moving through various sceneries of mountain terrain, sand deserts and forests in what attempts to be both individuals trying to connect with one another yet finding a barrier in the quest. Finally, the characters collide in the most intense of the backdrops, a volcanic eruption, which acts as a visual metaphor for the intensity that can occur within relationships.
If the accompanying music video is anything to go by, there is nothing that will stand in Black Summer’s way in 2018!
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