Various moments throughout Said The Sky‘s emotively-charged debut full-length Wide-Eyed provide their own enjoyable cliches that prove to be hard to resist, though in the most endearing way possible. Simply put, the Denver-based producer, real name Trevor Christensen, is his most awake on his introductory album, luring listeners in with a carefully-crafted musical vision of compelling classical refrains.
The 15-track offering is a testament to the four-year journey that has made Said The Sky a considerably unique force in the American electronic dance music sphere. Though Wide-Eyed is a long-awaited debut, it’s just the latest stop on a well-traveled journey of sonic accomplishments — he’s at the point in his career where the logical progression is to focus on the vivid depths and intricacies of creating a cohesive composition.
Accompanied by unmistakable vocal performances from the likes of Matthew Koma, Electra Mustaine, Vancouver Sleep Clinic and a plethora of rising talent on the LP, Christensen transcends the confines of what widely appealing electronic dance music can mean in the modern day. His challenging of genre and employment of classical elements is a refreshing defiance — full of newly-resplendent emotional capacity. It is the type of electronic music that invokes hot faces and teary eyes. Consider the writing and production credit from Timeflies, Andrew Goldstein/FRND, Kwesi (of Scooter Braun Projects), StayLoose and more, and it becomes clear that Wide-Eyed is not only a breakthrough work of matured candor, but an unmistakable ode to the beauty that lies in collaborative creativity and the responsibilities artists have to themselves, but also to a generation of fans that expect to be engaged both in the crowd and behind closed doors.
Reflecting on the release, Christensen explains:
“This LP turned out as the story of falling in and out of love. The first half of the album kind of portrays the feelings you have when you first meet somebody and are falling madly in love, while the second half represents the feelings you can go through after everything falls apart. This wasn’t a conscious decision from the beginning. I decided to create the whole album when I realized I was sitting on quite a few tunes that could live in the same world and could be part of the same story.”
Having played the piano and various instruments since the age of eight, Christensen has known this aforementioned feeling of fleeting love his entire life. For Said The Sky, there’s a moment of clarity that’s unique to Wide-Eyed. In pairing a refined ear for melodies and an early love for channeling the human condition into sonic arrangements, Christensen creates an emotive composition that is equally as beautiful and boundary-pushing as it is moving. Impressionable wonderment is what Christensen hopes to channel through his work — “an experience: a captivating blend of moving basslines and soaring melodies,” as his website so reads — and hopefully he never loses this sense of permanence that lies in belonging to a universal scale of emotional liberation.
Source: dancingastronaut.com
