Halloween song series #1: SOAK – ‘Sea Creatures’ (Unknown & Ryan Vail remix)
A Halloween series special today with posts dedicated to music that creates an uneasy, spooky, chilling or scary atmosphere… See Halloween for all posts in the series.
We’ll start with a hopeful one. The original of SOAK’s ‘Sea Creatures’, is a song written by 16-year old Bridie Monds-Watson which, despite the bafflement contained in the lyrics, the song’s light air emboldens the hopeful mood. Everything is going to be OK… maybe.
Maybe not. In the hands of Belfast-based producers Ryan Vail and Unknown, on their joint remix of ‘Sea Creatures’, the percussion is replaced with a beat that sounds like a downtrodden heart. There’s still a positive spirit in the piano chords but Monds-Watson’s voice has been covered in an echoey spectral film and pitched-shifted like some half-remembered lover’s advice. That the beat ends up sounding like a single drop of water falling into an empty bath doesn’t reduce the solitary atmosphere.
