Earlier this week, Swiss Portrait released Safe House, follow-up to his debut EP Familiar Patterns released just last year. Recording, mixing, and producing everything in his bedroom just outside Edinburgh, Michael Kay Terence keeps everything as DIY as possible, resulting in a soft, ambered, pastoral sound resting somewhere in between a daydream and a deep, enamored sigh. Safe House continues this aesthetic tenfold; the title track from the EP, the first track Terence wrote with his bandmates, is the perfect way to close out these handful of tracks, ironically pointing towards something of a fresh beginning rather than a finite ending. But then again, this perpetual oscillation between beginning and ending is the nature of Swiss Portrait’s style of dream pop, as shown in “Safe House” – ouroboric tendrils of synth swirl and dance like a summer breeze just after sunset, while Terence’s vocals melt into the landscape. In the last minute, metallic, heavily textured guitar breaks apart the fantasy for just a moment, almost as if a deeper part of the subconscious is telling the heart and mind to return to reality.
Safe House is out now.
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photo courtesy of artist
kid with a vinyl 