As Apollo grows closer to its September 9 landing on Rose Avenue, today Paraleven offers a brand new glimpse of the work to come via “Break Me Down,” featuring Fractures.
The single keeps with the celestial tones set forth in Apollo. Arpeggiation and soft snare taps form a feathery bedrock that complement the airy vocals Fractures provides. Intensity magnifies as “Break Me Down” unfolds, raising hairs with soaring orchestral pads and a dynamic melody hewn by roaring synths. It’s the kind of composition that brings listeners inside of themselves, just as Paraleven intends to do with his forthcoming longform project.
"‘Break Me Down’ is a very special song to me. One of those tracks that I expended a great deal of time and emotion. I fell in love with this progression in the beginning stages of the track and was able to wrap (what I consider to be) some of my best sound design around it. I wanted to create something beautifully hypnotic that doesn’t feel repetitive. Fractures did such an amazing job bringing this piece to life. He really captures the raw emotion I put into the production. The final product was a boundary pusher - and there are times I have listened to this that have actually ‘broken down’."—Paraleven
"With ‘Break Me Down’, from memory the demo came through entitled ’Sad Song’, so I took that cue and ran with it. I ran very hard with it. This was in the middle of the first of two lockdowns in Melbourne, and I’m sure like many I was going through the phases of disconnectedness and disconsolation that came and went through the period. I was in the midst of my own career setbacks; feeling stagnant and this song was a rumination on that. Almost feeling pathetic but hanging on to a wild hope. The instrumental was and is quite moving so I wanted to pay service to that as best I could. I’m really proud of this song, I have a feeling people will connect with this even still after some of the worst parts of lockdown have come and gone."—Fractures
It was Paraleven’s own deep dives into his mind that sparked Apollo’s creation. A psychedelic ego death experience at 21 revealed the transcendent nature of music, and his purpose in harnessing these frequencies to help others. As he sought to understand the brain’s complexities and the nature of consciousness, he realized that the unknowns of the inner world equated to the mystery of space itself. This juxtaposition of the inner and outer worlds is what Paraleven seeks to capture in Apollo, with its overarching motifs of hypnotic arpeggiation and subtle sound effects representing one’s internal odyssey.
Those touched by Apollo will get a chance to hear the album live as well. Paraleven kicks off his debut headlining USA tour on September 23, where he’ll be hitting Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Denver. This tour also marks the debut of his live set up.
“Creating a live set was always something I wanted to eventually transition to from DJing. I want to be able to bring a unique experience to each show - and have worked to incorporate an array of new hardware that will allow me to do so. There are certain places in my sets where I wished I could remove or add things - and now I will be able to improvise on the fly.”—Paraleven
For well over a decade, Paraleven has worked hard to develop the cinematic sound he’s known for today. His labor began bearing fruit shortly into his tenure as a solo artist; in 2019, his first releases were promptly picked up by This Never Happened, where he soon became one of the label’s most beloved new talents. Direct support for label boss Lane 8 on his tour followed soon after. Meanwhile, his Retrograde Mixtapes—recorded in the rejuvenating frequency of 432hz to coincide with each Mercury retrograde—now on the 6th iteration has begun picking up steam.
It wouldn’t be long before RÜFÜS DU SOL welcomed him into Rose Avenue with open arms, where he joins the ranks of Township Rebellion, Colyn, Cassian, and others that have collectively helped the melodic house genre forward. Now with his first-ever LP on the way, Paraleven is armed with even more tools to accomplish his greater mission of healing through music.