Still producing, engineering, and playing all the instruments on his music (aside from strings) from his small, windowless room in Brooklyn, Cale Hawkins incorporates both forward-thinking production and nostalgic elements on “Collapse”. What starts as a melancholic effort soon unfurls into a dynamic, sonic landscape of unorthodox, bass-fuelled rhythms and mesmerising harmonies driven by flickering piano and synth lines.
Testifying to the talent and breadth of his musical versatility, Hawkins improves with each release and continually transcends genre, tapping into indie, pop, folktronica and beyond. Further serving as evidence of Cale’s evolution, he now seems to opt for quality over quantity.
Lyrically, “Collapse” is about the yearning to escape from today's impermanence and chaos with a loved one. The song’s chorus, “Let’s get lost and watch reality collapse / Erase our thoughts and lay our hearts out like a map” paints this picture. As technology changed the way we connect and how we express love, Cale Hawkins puts his finger on the dissonance between our inner experience of love, and its role in a data-obsessed world.
Ruminating on the track, the multi-faceted artist explains: “While the definition of love has expanded in many beautiful, long overdue ways thanks to today's hyper-connectivity, it's also simultaneously been compartmentalized, in many cases, into "likes," "right swipes," and so on.”
Is it fulfilling our desires or shattering our ideal of romance? Regardless, it has us excited to hear more, soon…
