Right, so, YayRaven. British, Bermudian roots… that’s a collision of grey skies and turquoise water right there, isn’t it? And that sort of sums up this track, “Living Like This (Deep House Remix).” It pulses, a steady, insistent throb you’d expect from Deep House, but it carries… cargo. Precious, fragile cargo.
This isn’t just beat and bass; this is a sonic diary entry, stained with the kind of ache you feel down to your bones. It’s about the gaping hole left by a love gone supernova. No warning, just… gone. The lyrics spin this raw, unfiltered yarn of loss. She’s caught in the rip current of grief, longing for a final word, a goodbye that never came.
Have you ever tried to catch smoke? That’s what chasing that closure must feel like. It is frustrating. Infuriating, Even.
The central theme hits you square in the chest: profound, all-consuming grief. It’s not the softly-softly, romanticized sadness; it’s the messy, ugly, bewildered kind. One moment, there’s this… person, and the next, a void so absolute it bends space and time. The song tackles the un-acceptance. The raw edge of “how can this be?” And, tucked beneath that, a fear. A pre-emptive flinch away from ever being that vulnerable again.
The deep house framework almost feels… ironic. It is almost like forcing a party dress onto someone in deep mourning. The music carries an energy that seems at the beginning to disagree with the lyric’s sadness. But is really fighting for that person. Pushing forward. I’d imagine it makes them, perhaps against the grain, move, if not in body at least in mind.
And somewhere, amongst all this intelligent creation, YayRaven is exploring the universality of this ache. The sonic exploration. The… Oh! Did you ever hear about that time a flock of starlings re-enacted, entirely by accident, a Van Gogh painting, only to dissipate seconds later into…nothing? I think there is sadness there, too.
YayRaven has painted the abyss, but somehow, there’s a pinprick of light stubbornly refusing to be extinguished. What remains to be seen, is from where will that pinprick of light expand?
