Celestial Love

This is the third version of teen producer Darcy Baylis’ debut album as Naminé, but there’s no sense of frustration to it. Rather, it’s a clear and spacious emotional journey that doesn’t sound quite like anything else, writes LAWSON FLETCHER.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Fragments of Celestial Love have been floating around since about 2011 and, in a recent interview, Darcy Baylis revealed that two entire final cuts were lost in digital mishaps. Almost three years and three versions later, there isn’t a trace of the frustration this preternaturally talented young producer must have felt at times. What we hear instead is the progression and refinement of a remarkably distinct, assured aesthetic from a dude barely out of high school.

Whilst earlier EPs remain an endearing touchstone for their gauzy, hazy textures, the production here is streets ahead. Clear and spacious, it allows Baylis to paint a much fuller emotional canvas. It’s one smeared with the cosmic ennui of teen angst but, true to its title, this album also communicates with genuine empathy and honesty the melancholy that can accompany us when we reflect on the fragility of ourselves and our relationships.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Celestia by Naminé

Celestial Love pinpoints this oceanic feeling through the balance of atmosphere and exaction, drawing on the minimal, melancholic ambience of contemporary R&B producers 40, The-Dream and Mike WiLL Made It, but driven by the rhythmic pulse of classic house. There are also hints of Cut Copy’s nostalgia and Underworld’s post-club comedown, the trance state of Robert Miles’ ‘Children’ and the epic, emotional sweep of video game scores. But while there might be antecedents, there’s really no precedent – Celestial Love sounds like nothing else. Its lush synths, immersive low-end and measured, hypnotic tempo are all Baylis’ own.

“Baylis works like a craftsman, slowly paring back and refining to arrive at an exquisite object.”

It perfectly captures that liminal space between going out and going to sleep, the feeling you get looking out the window at raindrops pushed back by the wind, giving yourself over to contemplation as you catch the train home. This is exactly what the protagonist tries to do on the album’s centrepiece ‘The Train’ – a seven-minute epic, in three parts, about the crumbling final months of a broken relationship.

The middle section of the track vividly relates the small details: waking up after a party, sunlight streaming in, to find your ex sleeping next to someone else, so you steal their cigarettes – which brings you no joy – and try to find a train out of there. All the while, lush synths and a beautiful piano loop lend the song a complex emotional kaleidoscope that makes a specific experience universally relatable. In short: it’s devastating.

This is immediately followed by the previously aired ‘Haruka’, with Collarbones’ Marcus Whale on vocals, its gentle approach and nursery rhyme loops working far better in the album’s full trajectory. Elsewhere, on the constant build of ‘Celestia’, Baylis uses his vocal limitations to full advantage – drenched in reverb, they are always keening, pushing, and they fill the mood perfectly.

More experimental elements, from the pin-prick ’80s synths of ‘The Promise’ to the ceiling fan vocals of ‘Nocturne II’, like everything on here, are never overplayed. Whereas re-recording thrice over might tempt some to continue piling on loops and layers in a frenzy of digital maximalism, Baylis works like a craftsman, slowly paring back and refining to arrive at an exquisite object worked on but not overwrought, unique but universal, and wholly enchanting to comprehend.

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‘Celestial Love’ is out now through Bossman. It launches Saturday, July 6 at Mercat Basement in Melbourne with Michael Ozone supporting.