High quality electro r&b from a pasty Irish kid. That’s how Matthew Deane, otherwise known as ‘ghosts and leviathans’, looks to describe himself in a slightly humorous tongue in cheek manner. The Drake influenced electro-pop artist from the UK brings to life an exceptionally futuristic, hyper-pop aesthetic to the fore that’s loaded with metallic sounds that sound decades from today. Writing, mixing, and producing the entire project, his style is something unique to himself. It’s far from what you’d describe as conventional pop music, veering far to the left field of hyper pop that you might see from a 100 gecs of Charli XCX. But while the production has a lot to appreciate and be intrigued at, it’s the sentiment that carries this tune.
“I wrote the song after going home to Ireland for a few weeks. Going home to visit friends often feels the ultimate escape from reality, whatever else is going on in my life stops and I feel like a teenager with no responsibilities again. I wanted to capture the essence of that feeling – wanting to be young and messy forever, and celebrating friendship that makes you feel indestructible.”
As he sings ‘I’ll come home, I’ll be 19 forever here’, you can’t help but be enveloped by nostalgia and that feeling of joy that you felt in high school, the years where you felt like the entire world was at your feet. As the song breaks down in the final section into a cacophony of futuristic soundscapes, it suddenly breaks with distortion into black.
A tune built in tomorrow, for yesterday.