Life can make you feel a little helpless sometimes, like the threat of some daunting, inevitable task is poised in front of you. Mocking you. For me, that task was moving out of my apartment. It eventually got done; it only took four days, six people and an unseemly amount of beer to move the vast and miniature contents of my two-year residence. I had a lot of shit. But as I unpacked said shit, sifting through my SoundCloud stream, I found this.
It might not be helplessness rendered in these disparaging minor chords and forlorn howls, but it’s something like it. Something that places you right at the center of a very specific, very real kind of melancholy. It’s what makes this rough demo “Forever Young” by Maidstone, Britain’s H I G H first release of 2014 so instantly engaging. At least for me in my peculiar-feeling state. Eventually that iridescent, lo-fi mood expounds on itself: The drums tease out the volume and tempo until they reach a calamitous plateau, colliding against the force of a brash, upward-reaching guitar riff. The names attached to the track are Conor Rowlan and Ruaidhri Fuller, who might be the sole members of H I G H. The duo’s bare-skinned production and jam-session form make for an absolutely dope listen. So get on it.