cal-raasay-after-all

Photo courtesy of Cal Raasay

Cal Raasay Shows Off the Grand Majesty of the Scottish Landscape on “After All” (premiere)

Cal Raasay has a flair for taking the simplest of ideas and finding its emotional heart as we hear on the stunningly beautiful "After All".

Hailing from Northumberland, Callum Lawson (aka Cal Raasay) is a songwriter, producer and composer greatly influenced by the imposing mountains and glittering lochs of Scotland. Following the release of two EPs last year, the melancholic, experimental, 57-6, and the altogether starker, Horizon/Afore, Raasay returns with new EP Still, which features the song “After All”. The songs on the EP were all written on piano, a markedly different and liberating experience for him.

Today, PopMatters is premiering the beautifully lo-fi video for the track “After All”, a video that uses the grand majesty of the Scottish landscape as the backdrop for the songs wavering melancholy, as Raasay explains:

“I went to stay in a bothy back in January on the sides of Haystacks in the Buttermere valley. My friend Patrick shot this time-lapse on his Go-Pro, positioned just up the mountain from the bothy. I love the footage as it encapsulates so much of the emotional arc of ‘After All’, and it was shot in the very place that inspired most of the Still EP.”

The track itself is an emotive, stark piano piece, with crisp, definite notes that evoke the gradual build of rolling mountain mist that thickens before obscuring the landscape. As the day darkens and specks of artificial light punctuate the gloom , the tempo quickens and the song seems to gain greater purpose, finally reaching its dramatic climax as dusk succumbs to night.

Clearly heavily inspired by Nils Frahm and sharing a similar ability to write music that seems to be constantly metamorphosing, like the mist in the video, Raasay has a flair for taking the simplest of ideas and finding its emotional heart.

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