SG66: Darksoft - Relativism [LP]

Since the beginnings of this project, Darksoft has artfully coalesced dream pop and shoegaze into one stunning package. Following 2023’s Grayscale, the Portland, Maine based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer released another one of those packages titled Relativism, bringing into existence more of his lush, complex compositions. In his words, the running themes within the album are the idea that “views and opinions are relative and taste is subjective;” therefore, he concludes, we should “be accepting and have empathy for other people” and, ultimately, repeated in one track of the album, “live and let live.”

Apart from this, he makes clear that these songs are also, in part, inspired by the literal meaning of the word relativity, or, the concept that “time moves relative to the observer,” and for Darksoft, the album is partly inspired by his feeling that “the days really seem to go by faster and faster.” A quick look at the song titles, in fact, show Darksoft’s obsession with time and experience - “Then and Now,” “Till the End of Time,” “Day in the Life” - and, coincidentally, both concepts are immediately expressed in the opening track “Endless Day,” a song about immortality and attempting to draw out the everyday. Furthermore, the stellar production throughout the album - whimsical and yet slightly prophetic, darkened at the corners like a vignette - brings more attention to the beauty of the quotidian, the fact that it is beautiful because it is fleeting.