Music crisis is all about exploration friends, it’s all about expanding to unknown horizons and the discovery of this band was exactly that for me. I can’t remember how I came to find it, I believe this was after my first music crisis where I found a lot of atmospheric stuff, which often presents visuals related to the forests and cold landscapes, actually, the previous article in this category deals with that music in depth.

It’s fun how naturally resistant to change a person may be; let me elaborate, I was in a music crisis: yes, I needed something new: yes, I looked for something similar to the latest thing I discovered when I felt this way: also yes, xD. I’ve been listening to some psychology lectures about behavior and well, it seems humans tend to construct models of success based on experience, so I guess this is not completely illogical yet it’s a bit of a paradox when the subject is an exploration of the unknown!

So what does it have to do with “Low Roar”? Yeah, good question. Well again, I thought it maybe was some atmospheric metal thing, probably because the first record (which was the only one available at that time) displayed a moose and what seems to be a sound (roar?) coming out of its muzzle in the form of birds. So, quite a poetic and compelling illustration (that’s the image on top of this post in case you haven’t noticed yet).

Nothing further from metal, LOL. I was deceived by my genre bias, deceived but by no means disappointed! Once I started listening I couldn’t stop, and this doesn’t happen often with me, my attention span is let’s say, a struggle.

First Impressions

I’ve always been into guitar, I like the inviting sound of an acoustic guitar playing arpeggios and emotional tunes; this is exactly what I had at the very beginning with the song “Give Up” from the first record which is by the way entitled: Low Roar. Damn, it was like, straight to the heart! It’s beautiful and nostalgic and his voice is… like calming, not sure how else to describe it, calming and sweet. But there’s something else, what he was feeling, what he expresses in that song, even before learning the lyrics I knew we had something in common and it was an instant connection, this made his music super special to me up to this day.

Now, if I’m to describe the feelings and thoughts I get when I listen to any Low Roar song, this would become a really weird book that probably only makes sense to me, so I wanted to just focus on that first impression of the first song that pretty much won me as a life-long fan. The cool thing about this whole musical accident is that to me it was a treasure from there onwards, something very exclusive and something not a lot of people knew; also given my experience with absolutely beautiful musical projects that only launch one record, I was seriously hoping that didn’t happen with this one. Fortunately, it didn’t!

Ryan’s Story: The Source of the Connection

As I said before, the connection I made with this music was very immediate and also very emotional; so it was also a simple connection, facilitated by the magic and emotion of the music. This means it didn’t require a lot of research about this guy’s life or point of view, except for what he wrote in the YouTube video where I found his record, and unfortunately, I don’t have a way to retrieve that, since that old video probably disappeared long ago but he was basically explaining that he’d recently moved to Iceland, that it was a big life change for him and a struggle to get adapted, to begin a new life in a foreign country.

I thought about the situation he had at that time and how it’s represented beautifully in the music he composed; yeah maybe this wasn’t a tragedy, maybe this was just a decision with unforeseen consequences (I don’t know the details), but the feeling of being absolutely lost in life, the pain of caring deeply for things that others don’t seem to even contemplate as important, the fear, and pressure of not achieving success, the anxiety concerning relationships and the absolute uncertainty when most of your life is in uncharted territory. All of this may potentially be right in front of an immigrant in a new country, and even if I haven’t experienced it fully myself (I’ve been away for prolonged seasons but not permanently), I can definitely empathize and relate to all of these feelings, through other types of experiences I’ve had.

So glad to see you again!

So yeah, what’s a digital Norman Reedus doing in this article? Well, you may know the answer depends on how much you are into gaming; this is a scene from Death Stranding, a Kojima game that has a unique story and luxury cast. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but hey, that happens with excellent stuff I’m still playing it and enjoy it quite a bit. Now, part of the difficulty in the game is related to walking: the main character is a delivery guy, in a post-apocalyptic dystopia where being the delivery guy is pretty much as badass as it gets since it’s just too dangerous to be out of shelters (it’s a long story).

OK, so what about Low Roar? Well you know, if you’re always into music, sometimes you stop listening to artists you like for periods of time, as you’re discovering new stuff. I kept listening to Low Roar for quite a while, when the “0” record came out I was thrilled but I didn’t keep up to date with much else (I was just glad Ryan kept publishing music). To my absolute surprise, my first long walk playing Death Stranding which included a soundtrack was… guess what? Low Roar! Oh my God I couldn’t believe it, this was so exciting! And for various reasons:

1. I love the game
2. I love the music
3. I feel like I knew this guy since he was in a moment of so much uncertainty, and seeing him in a deal this size is just fulfilling!

I don’t know what the impact of this collab has been for Low Roar, but I mean this is a game with a large budget and I’m guessing it was a pretty good deal. Regardless of the details, I love it that it seems we will have Low Roar for a while, I’ve been visiting the website and see a lot of concerts in a lot of cities and the whole presence of the artist on the Internet is way different to what it used to be; and even with all of this, it seems the indie essence of the project remains.

I’m happy with this review time to say goodbye for now.

J.V