Blindness & Light “Chains”

Blindness & Light is not a band you’d forget after listening to their music. It’s fascinating because their sound seems to shimmer right on the verge of blindness and light — it’s a beautiful obscurity that seems enormous but traceless. It draws you and leaves you in tears and shocked. “Chains” is a track that feels like it. KEEF’s Old Town Remix amplifies the many good stuff that already exists in Blindness & Light original songwriting, but they also take the track to a different artistic direction that’s quite interesting.

KEEF keeps the sultry, hypnotic guitar riff that puts listeners immediate in the middle of a desert or somewhere out in the open. There’s that emotional heightened solitude in the riff itself. The Old Town Remix does a really great job multi-layering the drum with a flickering rhythmic guitar. The way they complete each other is simply so immersive. They add to that picturesque, broad, mood-filled sonic landscape so effortlessly.

There’s slightly more metallic in the Old Town Remix, compare to the original version. It’s more wicked. It paints a shimmering, dimming and lightening sonic landscape in the backdrop that gives the track a rare phenomena feel. On top of that, the entire track just spreads out in your ears to a point it’s slightly psychedelic and mystical. The vocals are reverberant and broad. They blend into the mood-filled scenery so perfectly, and so is the solo that lies on the more experimental side.

One thing that feels missing is the fading dissonance in the original “Chains.” The note bend adds a slight microtonal flair to the track that seems at core of its aesthetic. Old Town Remix makes the song more atmospheric and immersive, but the dissonance and the nuance seems to be lost in the process.