BLACK RAYN Lets Us Into Their “Callous Hearts”

Hailing from Germany, the mesmerizing electronic duo BLACK RAYN introduces us to their latest 5-track EP 'Cassandra' with the release of the project's lead single, "Callous Hearts."

Having met at university back in 2014, BLACK RAYN quickly sparked their creative chemistry by utilizing the school's facilities to begin their musical endeavors. Now releasing their latest EP, 'Cassandra,' Philipp Hill and Bülent Kirschbaum are ready to win listeners over with their melodic dance tunes.

When elaborating on the EP, BLACK RAYN mentioned, "We felt like our material is still, if not more up to date than ever and appeals to our desire and longing for closure, healing, and new beginnings," which leads us to their savory deep house single, "Callous Hearts."

Listening to "Callous Hearts," the journey begins with mid-tempo dance drums, whaling background synths, and a melodic saxophone that offers a warm organic flair. As vocalist Kirschbaum begins expanding on his inner thoughts and thinking himself into a spiral, the sonics begin to pick up with crisp snares and unique vocal samples.

We can feel a similar melodic deep house sound to acts like Bob Moses and Cassian, as BLACK RAYN allows us to deepen our emotional attachment to this single through their meaningful lyricism and celestial sonics. As we move towards the outro, we're met with a transcendent beat drop that punches our speakers with tight drum arrangements and Kirschbaum's soothing vocal stylings. Reaching the track's end, we're more than excited to explore the sonic depths of the rest of their EP.

Lose yourself in the melodic deep house grooves of BLACK RAYN's latest single, "Callous Hearts," and find their EP 'Cassandra' on all streaming platforms.

Hello BLACK RAYN and thank you for joining us at BuzzMusic. We truly admire the melodic tones and heartfelt feel of your latest single, "Callous Hearts." When did you begin creating this emotional and groovy tune?

Thank you! It’s been a long journey! We started recording some acoustic bits and bobs in 2014 including a draft for “callous hearts”. Back then we didn’t have the idea to turn it into a song like this yet and we didn’t have plans to be a duo either. It was just Phil being the recording and mixing engineer for Bülent’s acoustic sessions. Could you expand on your duo's creative process for "Callous Hearts?" What sort of feel and vibe did you want to offer with this track?

At first, as a guitar and vocal track, it was rather dark and melancholic, but once we started adding some synths it brightened up and became a little more bouncy and fluffy, so we decided to go with a 4/4 bounce and make it a house track. In the end, it turned out to be a melancholic but warm dance floor cut, maybe something to close a summery festival set with? We would!

What sort of lyrical themes does your duo usually touch on? What message did you want to convey within "Callous Hearts?" Bülent is the lyrical Jedi behind our songs. His lyrics are mostly about love, new love, old love, lost love, newly found love. As with the sound, we like to stay on the melancholic, darker, and deeper side of things in the lyrics as Bülent is inspired by middle age folk music and poetry a lot. How long did it take to create and finalize your EP 'Cassandra?' Did you find yourself going back and reworking parts of the project?

It took 7 years from the first ideas to the release! It sounds crazy, but we didn’t work on it for 7 years obviously lol! After we had the first drafts, Phil experimented with the recordings a little bit and decided to do a little more than just add his own touch to the mix, the songs turned out to be completely different from what Bülent had envisioned. We both loved the result at which we decided to maybe, possibly start a collab project. We did need to re-record some of the vocals because they weren’t as tight as we’d need them to be over the electronic drums. That took a year or two as we don’t live in the same city and have other stuff going on. Once we had the vocals re-recorded the mix needed to be adjusted so that took some time again. But in 2020 we both had some time and bülent started working on new material already so we had to finally finish and release this first piece of work!

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