Drums seemingly hidden beneath a blanket are igniting a blaze that won’t burn out in “Stepping into Eternity,” the new single from Sp8ce Owl, but they’re not the only agent of evocation lining the sonic walls of this stately exhibition in eccentric musicality. “Stepping into Eternity” has the framework that ambient disciples require in a soundtrack to a never-ending night of meditation, and in the few minutes that the song lasts, you’ll find yourself as tempted to get lost in the music as you are to spin the track all over again once it comes to a stop. Experimentalism has been an exciting genre of music to cover this season, and indie artists like Sp8ce Owl, whose boundaries are set only by their imaginative creativity, are the biggest reason why.
The instrumentation here is produced with a lot of attention to detail, but there’s never any question as to who the real star of “Stepping into Eternity” is. Sp8ce Owl exerts a lot of energy from behind the mixing board with his structuring of this instrumental, and he’s careful to make sure that his most cathartic emissions are perfectly timed with the explosive beats that the drums have to discharge. There are a few moments where the synths make a play for superiority, but even at their most intense and unwavering, they’re never as sensuous, nor as emotive, as the verses are on their own. I don’t recall the last time that I listened to instrumental music with as much of a striking centerpiece, but I like what I’m hearing in this song just the same.
If Sp8ce Owl’s performance in this track is any indication as to the kind of production he’d have on stage, in front of hundreds if not thousands of people there to cheer him on, then he, incontrovertibly, is the full-package as a solo artist. I think that he could do this electronically-faceted material just as well as he could something more soulful and relaxed in tempo, and both sides of the electronica spectrum could use someone of his charismatic panache right now. The financial successes of his mainstream counterparts have led to stagnation in the genre as a whole, but this kind of independent stylization could set him apart from the crowd in all the ways that count the most.
It’s not as surreal as the other ambient pop singles critics are in love with at the moment, but “Stepping into Eternity” will get your heart racing like nothing else can this season. It takes a special kind of songwriter to be able to communicate the emotions that this track does through rhythm and rhyme alone, but Sp8ce Owl somehow makes it look effortless here. He’s got the kind of talent that music journalists like myself love to write about, and at this juncture, it could be molded into pretty much anything that he wants to pursue. If there’s know one thing that I know for sure, it’s that if he sticks with this current sound, he can count on staying on my radar through the rest of the year and beyond.
