“Dancing With Ghosts” is the teaser single from Jesse Beaman’s forthcoming album, “Mira.” The track starts out simply, with soft, reverbed synths and a steady four on the floor beat, building a dark stage for what’s to come. As instruments gradually come in, it feels like your eyes focusing, adjusting in the darkness. Shapes take form: snares roll subtly under bright, whirring pianos.
The track does not transform, it unfolds. The melody stays largely consistent, but it blooms and softens, heaves and contracts in a very organic way. Kinetic yet subtle, the instruments move with such understated synchronicity that — should you not be listening hard enough — you stand to miss the best parts. It is a sleek and seamless piece, ethereal and icy. It is music that feels “cool” without sacrificing self-awareness.
Self-awareness is essential here, as “Dancing With Ghosts” lends itself easily to introspection. It’s electronic but it’s distinctly human. While it opens with hard, precise drums and synths, the end of the song finds the aforementioned bright pianos fluttering, scattered and disembodied over a beat that crashed to a halt measures earlier.
The song is powerful, not only in its watertight production (handled by Interpol’s Brandon Curtis) and its composition, but in its mysterious emotional weight. Though the piece clocks in at less than four minutes, the phases of the song pass like seasons: at times it feels nostalgic and longing, at times vivacious. If Beaman’s music can take so many forms in under four minutes, the inquisitive listener will find themselves excited for what he’ll do in a full-length release.
– Tín Rodriguez