Traditionally speaking, I am not an adventurous person. As I mentioned in my previous Song of the Day post “Nothin On My Mind by Astronomyy“, I’m doing my best to step out of my comfort zone and take advantage of my current trip to a land that is foreign in just about every sense one could imagine. Now that I’ve arrived and keep constantly circling my head around in 360º acts of cultural stupor, I’m beginning to question why I approach unfamiliar landscapes with caution, and whether that is commonplace among most people. Why is the unknown so off-putting. Why is timidness the initial reaction to harmlessly new terrain. These questions have yet to be answered, but I’ve found that the musical representation of my naturally slow cultural conformation are less adrenaline-filled and more mindfully reserved.

Ford. (there’s a period after his name which may make for awkwardly structured sentences) and his ambient take on Ben Howard’s “i, promise” are here to inspire intrepid worldly behavior that even shy folks like myself can wrap their head around. Again, “i, promise” isn’t meant to inject doses of figurative epinephrine directly into the bloodstream like many of today’s heart-racing genres. Instead, “i, promise” sends the listeners into a deeply reflective state that borderlines on the cliched musical descriptor “atmospheric” in it’s ability to explode through walls into an open-aired expanse. The initial soundbite is less representative of the mindset I’m looking to achieve in it’s gloomy and pessimistic nature, but the strange inclusion of a perceived life lesson is an interesting pull regardless. I also need to make note of my distaste for the lack of credit ford. gives to Ben Howard in remixing his original acoustic ballad, but at the same time it’s incredibly rare in this day and age for SoundCloud-centric electric artists like ford. to create completely authentic material in their budding phase. We can give the young German a rare hall pass for now in his embryonic and blossoming artistic state, but such credit-less work won’t go unscathed in the future.