Trent-Jean “Cities Burning”
“Cities Burning” comes at you with its sharp edged blades of emotions, pouring down in fragments. Like a mirror’s broken, pieces scattering in all directions. The brokenness and torn is palpable in the spiraling and sprawling disorientation of sounds. Trent-Jean brings that mind-blowing multi-dimensional soundscapes into your ears, immersing you at the same time, hitting harder each time when its earworms of melodies come around, haunting you to the very core. “Cities Burning” is bleeding and intoxicating, highly addictive and heart-wrenching, carved into your brain.
As a song with magnificent, multi-layered audio-visual effect, the core strings all the way back to Trent-Jean’s brutal vulnerability. The song opens with an almost ideal, utopian greenery. Peaceful and liberating, but so soon, the storm wraps its tentacle around and hide that love and vision deeper and deeper until all there left is layers and layers of struggle and torture. Sonically, Trent-Jean constructed it all with sounds, which is quite impressive.
Inspired by a past love turned stone, “Cities Burning” is a chaotic epic revolving around the intensity of love, loss and redemption. Through sonic cinematic explosion, even in the turmoil, the soft core of tenderness is not lost. It seems to be the source of all the suffering, and it’s coiled into the melodies, being echoed throughout the song in waves.
Read our interview with Trent-Jean and learn more about the inspirations behind “Cities Burning.”
Punk Head: I love how "Cities Burning" takes listeners on an immersive and profound sonic experience. What's the story behind this single?
Trent-Jean: At the end of an early relationship of mine, as I watched the chemistry turn to unrequited love, I looked at my then girlfriend and said “this feels like my city is burning.”
PH: What do you like the best about this track?
Trent-Jean: What I love most about this track is the way Rob Grant (Poons Head Studios) masterfully co-produced, mixed and mastered it.
PH: Are there any specific musical or lyrical influences that played a role in the creation of this single?
Trent-Jean: Musically Josh Gallagher’s live drumming really ignited and inspired fire-cracker energy to the tune. Shoutout to the mighty!
And lyrically, I was inspired to using less cliché metaphors to articulate my emotions on the topic of love, loss, youth and atonement.
PH: What is your creative vision as an artist?
Trent-Jean: To create and present the best possible art I can do so in this lifetime.
PH: How is the music scene in Perth?
Trent-Jean: It is a healthy potpourri of styles. I’m fortunate that I found my tribe, which we call 9th-Dimension Records.
