Exclusive Premier - 2nd single from the album "Closure, Start Over" by Denver, Co's Confluence
"Continuation" is a smoothly flowing jam that easily keeps me swaying and bouncing with the beat all throughout. It seems to be mostly in 4/4 time, though the band does a great job of masking that behind some timing and rhythmic tricks, with a couple transitions that appear to be in 6/4.
The song begins with Confluence's signature melodic guitar texturing, with one playing a melody consisting of dotted eighth notes while the other lets some single notes ring out every four bars or so. Both guitars are mostly clean with some reverb and perhaps a slight delay to keep things nice and chill. The story then continues as drums, bass and vocals join in and we get into the meat of the song. I really notice here that the singer Ian Gassman makes a great combination of both his natural voice and his falsetto voice as well which is a subtle yet important emotional emphasis at just the right points in the songs on this album.
Moving on, with Zoo Strategies like vibes, I hear a transition part that shifts the timing to 6/4 before leading into a catchy guitar riff alternating between more dotted eighth note chords and a fast tapping/sliding section (which I am an absolute sucker for) played by the left and right guitarists, respectively. After this, the band plays a fun little riff with some odd timing and rhythmic placement to throw off the shackles of the mundane, mediocre song structures heard in most pop music today. This is one of the many techniques I love that are often used in math rock. To continue, The previous sections of the song repeat again in the same order as the singer's story continues to unfold through his lyrics.
All throughout the song, the bassist maintains a solid melodic groove while the drummer dances between the snare and hi-hat. After the second repetition of the tapping bridge, I'm greeted with a new, bouncier guitar riff backed by more driving percussion lines from the drummer and bassist while the singer reaches the heights of his range and even adds some grit to his voice for more aggressiveness emotionally. This then leads to my favorite section of the song, the outro. The guitars add on some distortion as all instruments break into a hard hitting assault to close the whole thing out. This song gets a solid 5 out of 5 rating as the best on the album. Stay tuned next Friday for another new single premier!
-Nick C. Full Album Drops Oct 26th 2018
Pre-Order Here: confluenceband.bandcamp.com
video:
TMRX SHIRTS $10
