Written by S x m b r a. Picture by CleFW Photography.
For anyone of us, 2020 has so far been an accelerating rapid of strangeness. From roaring wildfires and ominous war rumours right into a pandemic leading to unprecedented global economic shutdowns, the consequences of which are only just beginning to manifest. But where one caves back into paralysing angst and self-destruction, the other blooms open.
In her previous EP Twisted Transcendence, the Amsterdam based singer-songwriter Giek_1 reflects on the current state of global affairs from the psycho-historical analogy with the healing process of overcoming drug addiction. As the confusing turmoil of 2020 coincides with an intensifying shift towards a new spiritual age worldwide, between people too, these two contrasting realities can touch each other. Relationships can be the ultimate, intimate confrontation with healing processes inside oneself, coming back via the other person. Escape is the story of such intimate confrontation, a learning process in the liminal tunnel moving in between the unhealed and the healed paradigm through love.
Hardest Storm and Both Ways, which both came with an immersive video last month, are stilled, are introspective tracks that suggest enormous implicit tension. Like looking, and crying, at a sleeping oblivious lover’s face while the separation process inside has already completed.
From the held breath beginning of Hold the Time, emotion starts to flow outwards, with tension building up from the second half and further into Fade, like a dramatic argument unfolding in slow motion. In Closure, the confrontation calms down to a decisive conclusion, airing out the truth that had been kept inside all the time, but from a point of regained inner truth and strength. It is the definite clarity of healed reality found on the other side of the tunnel that enables to let go with love rather than grief or anger. In the same way, Giek_1 invites all of us to enter the tunnel, leaving the old paradigm behind with hope and certainty.
The instrumentals are composed by experimental beats & bass producer Frenquency and the artwork is from graphic designer Mary Ponomareva.
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