St. Wave - Radiation
"St. Wave embodies the essence of our millennial generation. An artist that walks a familiar line of obligation: first generation immigrant pressures. A lifetime student, St. Wave received his college degree at the University of Hartford. Along this journey he discovered his passion for music. Since his enlightenment he vowed that his music would receive 31,492,753 streams in order to pay off his Sallie Mae student loans.
After the release of his first project “Troposphere” in 2017, St. Wave began creating his own path by using the building blocks of creative sound selection and enchanting writing to convey his differences lyrically. Paired with his fondness for science fiction, retro aesthetics, and his rearing within the scenic NY suburbs, St. Wave generates polarizing music submerged within coded poetry to engage the listener while still giving a “peacefully cool vibe”.
“Radiation” is an album wrapping its fibers around the body of internal dialogue - how an internal struggle can taint an environment and the effect its atmospheric frequency has on a person’s inner peace.
It reflects on the dissonance of the millennial generation which ironically is more disconnected with each other and themselves as technology continues to advance. This album’s intention is to inspire individuality and authenticity."
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Today we'll be reviewing St. Wave's new 9 track album titled "Radiation"
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The introduction track is "Judy" - a perfect opening for the album, the song enters slowly, with cinematic real life sounds, hidden amongst the tranquil yet fulfilling backing beat.
Maintaining a soft sound throughout, it oozes a real floatiness, with occasional flashes of keys lifting its vibes even further skyward. It does slightly change up towards the end, but maintains the intricacies that hold it together, something they do so brilliantly throughout this song.
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We then move into one of the best crafted tracks on the album (in my opinion), "Anti Social Social Club" which as the title suggests swaps some of its shine for a slightly more ominous feel. More stripped back than the opener, it again showcases some glittering modern sounds, but undoubtedly gets a more meaningful, deeper message across as the lyrics progress. This is what turns out to be a run of tracks which go down the same route of using few elements to convey the sound, relying on the strength of the craftsmanship, and doing it successfully.
The feature of female vocals from Whitney Nicole adds a whole new level of depth to the track.
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After this is "FaceTime"
The complex organisation of this song feels upbeat and action packed, and at times leaves you wondering what to pigeon hole the sound as, but there’s no time or need to, and you continue to marvel at it for what it is. Too unique to be a pop track, it's a new modern mix of genres. It's a great piece of song writing, and it needs to be heard. Relatable lyrics such as "late nights" when talking about face time intrigues the listener and creates a bond between them and the song.
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Building to a crescendo, dropping out, and building again; it has a real sense of structure whilst simultaneously maintaining the rawness and originality that gives it such charm. "Sitcoms" is the 4th track on Radiation and conjures up all of the artist's explosive powers to produce.
This track sees St Wave and featured artist FLYDOLL flourish, the songwriting and composition is strong and the relevant and relatable lyrics will see listeners in awe of what the track has to offer. ‘Sitcoms’ is a stunning track which will help the artist establish himself as a new, exciting artist.
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The next track really caught my attention with reverbful elements of nostalgic hiphop beats merged with modern sounds, "Missed Calls".
The real strength behind this track, however, is not just the ambient instrumentation, its the vocals themelves. Like any good soul song it needs a real driving force which gives the song meaning, and the unrelenting dynamism he can command from his vocal chords gives it this in bucket loads.
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"Coffin" is a more slowpaced, ambient track, that is filled with haunting, reverbful delay backing effects, this creates a dystopian, ghostly feel that immediately transports you to space, floating through calmness.
In a way this almost feels like two different songs in places. There's playful sound effects in places, like the aforementioned haunting sounds, give parts of it the feel of a more experimental song, but it’s in the more stripped back vocal moments, where the song is allowed to display the range of talents the artist possesses that make it much more than that.
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The next song features 2 artists "Isla Will" and "Dr. Cherry"
While the track "Leave" features an experimental structure, the lyrics hold onto the progressive feel as the rest of the album. Lyrically, the rhythmic approach seems to be what the artist is going after, and it still gets the point across firmly. Action packed from start to finish, the dynamics in the track flow with guidance from the track’s multiple artist influences.
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As the album slowly begins to comes to an end, the 2nd to last track "Famous" is introduced.
The 2 minute track shines with ambience and radiates in the listeners head with off the tongue fast paced lyrics and clear vocals. It ends with a fade, leaning into the finale track.
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Carried along almost solely by the elegance, the splendor of "Limitless" really is something to behold.
It’s a track that never gets too high or too low, but instead drifts along as you get lost in its soothing rhythms, and before long it’s time to hit repeat… again. The more chilling elements in this track, namely the sombre instrumentals which the words sit atop, give it a distinctively eerie feel, but the undeniable power in which St. Wave carries in his voice lifts any drab feelings skyward.
Check out the new album for yourself here!
https://album.link/i/1567265901
