Sidetrack Walker

https://sidetrackwalker.bandcamp.com

Sidetrack WalkerSidetrack Walker is an independent music project focusing on atmosphere and honest, emotional songwriting. Headed by German artist Dominik Sonders, it draws on genres such as Art Rock, Trip-Hop, Drum’n’Bass, Dark Folk and Modern Classical.(Photo: Nikita Mädge)The Sickness, released 19 August 20221. Running Out2. Favourite Illusion3. Am Ziel4. Chasing Echoes (Call Me When I’m Gone)5. Ticket into Hell6. To Boldly Let Go7. Song of Longing8. Broken Barrel9. The Sickness10. All the While11. Time and Place (Theory of Personal Relativity)After the release of my previous album, “The Art of Starvation”, I was burned out completely. The overexertion leading up to the release had left me broken and sick.“The Sickness” is the album that healed me.In early 2020 I was ready to give up music and didn’t write anything or touch an instrument for a long time. I’d been trying to establish myself as an independent artist and doing almost all of the work myself, from songwriting and performing to mixing and art direction to leading a live band to promotion. All of this was done on a budget of welfare money because my health prevented me from having a regular day job. On top of that, my music has always been hard to market due to its stylistic ambiguities. To cut a long story short, it was just too much for one person to handle, and it smothered all of my creativity.After long months of chronic exhaustion and soul searching, overshadowed by the impressions of the harrowing pandemic, I felt that my identity had been wiped clean in a good way: I had learnt the life lesson of letting go. It had been a life-long dream, an axiom of my self-image even, to make my artistic voice heard and reach a broader audience. But I realised that in order to salvage my love for music and creativity, I had to let go of that dream and let things evolve naturally instead. Many other aspects of my personality and outlook on life had to be reevaluated in a similar fashion, and a lot of that is reflected in the lyrics on “The Sickness”.Indeed, with this blank slate as a basis, and drawing inspiration from the pain-staking process that had led to it, I had started creating again! The first new song I recorded, fittingly, was called “To Boldly Let Go”, a less-than-subtle nod to the famous Star Trek slogan. Soon I was totally enveloped in a cathartic songwriting and production process that led to even deeper reflections on the world we live in and my possible role in it. I drew a lot of strength and positive energy from this process.My workflow had changed completely. I worked in a much more spontaneous and experimental way, turning random artefacts of the studio process into musical elements and deciding on arrangement details on the spur of the moment, which yielded much more exciting and organic results than on my earlier efforts. I also went for a much warmer, sampling-heavy, almost ‘retro’ sound drawing heavily on musical influences from the 70s and 90s alike.“The Sickness” isn’t just a very personal album. It’s also the most universal one I’ve made so far, with lyrical observations that identify signs of sickness not just in myself, but in society as a whole, in the individuals populating it, and even in the music business (as showcased by “Broken Barrel”, which will precede the album as a single). It’s not so much about victims and symptoms of sickness, but more about the dysfunctional mechanism that make us sick and how we can deal with them in a constructive way.Musically, the eleven tracks cover a lot of ground, with influences ranging from Trip Hop and Drum’n’Bass to Prog Rock and Dark Folk, integrated into concise and accessible Pop arrangements with an old-school vibe that I miss in many modern productions. Sidetrack Walker’s trademark melancholy ties it all together into a condensed emotional package. Despite the dark themes and atmosphere, the music is permeated by a new-found sense of sheer fun, making it much easier to digest than its predecessor. Sidetrack Walker followers will recognise many elements, but are in for a number of surprises, too. Two songs even feature rap, presenting an entirely new facet of my musical persona!“The Sickness” feels extremely relevant both to me personally and to the time we live in, and creating it was one of the most rewarding and educational experiences of my life. It has helped me grow immensely as an artist and as a human being.

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Category: Arts & Entertainment

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Currency : EUR

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Platform: Bandcamp

Technologies used: Fastly CDN

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