Hear the term cinematic, when applied to music, and you probably think of either soft, ambient background sounds or songs built on anthemic crescendos – music made at extremes, the serene or the sensational. Well, the real charm of JK Jerome’s latest song is that it seems to find a more scintillating middle ground for music thus labelled.
There are elements of both understatement and the wide-screen about ‘I Just Want To Soar,’ perfect for a song about transcending the everyday, but it is where those opposite forces meet that the magic happens; after all, you know what they say about opposites!
Give the more minimalist and folk-finessed vibe of some of his previous singles, this new one comes with a more contemporary, busier and more sonically layered feeling – effected electric motifs dance over picked acoustic guitars, organic, clapped beats anchor a swirling synthy sonic sea, and the vocals are both timelessly rootsy and thoroughly modern, authentic and pop-aware.
But it isn’t just genres that are mixed and merged; those clapped percussive rhythms and that liltic acoustic underpinning all add to the exotic Mediterranean traditions that echo through, flamenco-esque and sun-soaked, to balance the cooler folk vibes of his UK home.
We already know that Jerome is a master of modern indie-folk; here, he proves that there is so much more to his music, and so much more to come. Watch this space.
