With a supersonically falsetto register that ricochets straight by the confines of alt-pop predictability, Stephan Folkes turned the ache of grief right into a celestial ceremony in his newest single, Is This Paradise?. The centrepiece of his debut LP Hazard, the only opens with a melancholic whisper of piano keys earlier than the emotional structure is constructed brick by brick with soul-aching harmonies and a way of fragility that by no means begs for sympathy, solely understanding.
Each second of Is This Paradise? questions what we chase in our determined attain for euphoria. But as an alternative of floating in an idealised dream pop reverie, Folkes threads the sanctity of longing into his sound design, letting the absence turn into an instrument as a lot because the layered vocal work and plush cinematic thrives. The result’s much less of a style experiment and extra of a lucid, inventive reckoning.
By his aliases—The Visionist, Dream Pop King, King of Fantasy—Folkes builds emotional cathedrals. There’s a way that he’s at all times had one foot within the ethereal and the opposite firmly planted in East London’s concrete, and that grounding is what makes his model so arrestingly human. As a self-produced artist who’s overcome greater than most would in a lifetime, his defiance runs by the veins of his work with the identical depth as his falsetto.
Is This Paradise? is now accessible on all main streaming platforms, together with Spotify.
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Overview by Amelia Vandergast
