Dust On The River (Single 2021)

The Boy I Used To Be

Expressive Melancholic Music

Art has many different faces: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance and poetry Hegel names and there’s filmmaking as well. And often they influence each other, and bring up ideas and memories.

At the end of March, The Boy I Used To Be started his social media campaign for his new single “Dust On The River”, short “DotR”. One week before the release, he revealed the cover, showing an alien astronaut upside down, and what would be the sky is under water and in beautiful shades of blue color.

The title with its topic water reminds of his single “Bern”. In his lyrics, he mentions two pictures, which stimulate the imagination: the astronaut, that in ones head is a stranger to his own home and needs a suit to survive on earth, that is destroyed by his own kind.

An octopus is the other word standing out, thinking of a Stam1na tour shirt, holidays and Paella. Musically, the track is splendid unconventional. It surprises in the beginning with the beat and riff, having bit of a surfer reggae drive and a great refrain. It is not that melancholic but happy, with an appealing transition to the closing part with several voices and strumming.

The mastering was done by Alexander Lausch. For the video, MattyPo of fiverr used footage of “A Trip To The Moon” by Georges Méliès, based on Jules Verne, who wrote “20,000 Leagues under the Sea”, “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, “Around the World in Eighty Days”, “The Mysterious Island” and others.

At first, the pictures support the lyrics, like “then we find out” the people in submarine seem to have an idea and “its cold on the ground”, the train leaves a frosty rock. It reminds of 90s Lego and has a trippy feeling, like the colors that are used. Like this, the song and its visual part maintain each other.