distant

nuages is one of those artists that, unless you really know me, you don't know are one of my favorite artists oat. They're a UK producer best known for "dreams", a classic of which the YT stream on Fae Child has more than 63 million streams... after that, no one really knows nor cares to check out their other material.

They make downtempo music informed by such things as lo-fi hip hop, ambient, and a little bit of future garage. They are prob my favorite producer of all time. Their discography has such a wide range of styles you'd be pleasantly surprised by their reach, and no one on AOTY knows it. In fact, I am the only one that put their discography here... it's incomplete because, despite being a few singles mostly and being inconsistent across streaming platforms, yeah.

"distant" is arguably their most popular song outside of "dreams" and "closer"... those two tracks are considerably nuages's hits MGMT-style. It's also my favorite song by them.

I have a history with "distant" as my love for it stems from my teenage years. This was around the time where electronic music in the vein of ODESZA, Porter Robinson, Madeon, Shawn Wasabi, M4SONIC... this was my thing. I had a first love, of which was a girl. And I'll never forget her. Her birthday, in fact, was a few days ago and I never got to tell her because she has dropped off the face of the earth again. My infatuation for "nuages" stems chiefly from having loved "dreams" then checking out their other material.

One day, I found the YT stream by a channel now named A2Cosmos, of which this song was played. Shaving off five seconds from the beginning, this was ripped from a music aggregator's Twitter that has long since been deleted. This aggregator was Wavevision. The rest is history.

There's an underlying use of a field recording to begin, and then mellow pads follow with a solemn progression. The song's chief melody is pensive, melancholy, depressing. In follows a bass synth and more pads which round out the melody and ground the listener, as well as snippets of pitched-up vocal samples.

It's hauntingly beautiful and depressing, and you should listen to it.

This was the first song I ever loved, and has survived through multiple breakups. But it's most notable and first use was whenever I missed her, I simply played the song and let myself be comforted and saddened. I believe I have cried to this song even.

Because I have songs for people I romantically love.

I was 14 or 15. Now I'm 18. I have a boyfriend whom I've been happily dating for 3 months, a fourth of a year now. There are ups and downs, like a relationship should always have. But we're still together, and I love him dearly. As he does me.

I still play this song so often.