Listen to the new album below.
Today The Beautiful Fear (aka Matthew Bannister) has released his new double album, The Waltz of the Moonshine Blind. The Brooklyn/Miami-based, English producer/musician re-connected with himself after a stint in rehab and came to find expression for his darker traumas through music. The result is a collection of songs that's as meticulously detailed and focused as it is an elusively stunning piece of musical work. Listen and share the new album below.
Now six years sober, it's been a transformative journey for Bannister. The Waltz of the Moonshine Blind details his struggles with mental health as well as breaking the cycle of addiction. Turbulent emotions are layered, etched and textured "cine-manically" while he wrestles with a hopeful yet atavistic longing. It's a brave stance from an artist who has decided to make himself vulnerable in terrifically raw ways to the audience. But there's more to it than just a spontaneous confessional. Bannister elaborates, "I coined the term 'The Beautiful Fear' in an attempt to describe the terrifying yet beautiful process of change one makes in life to try and find a better version of oneself. The good days are on the other side of the fear." Each song falls into either the "manic" or "depressive" category. "Present But Never There," the newest single and video that premiered with BlackBook Magazine, is in the "manic" category. It conveys the alternating fleeting highs mixed with the valleys of anxiety one experiences in withdrawal. Feeling like you are constantly missing something, like losing your oldest 'friend', even if you know that 'friendship' is ultimately abusive. "Unpacking the past is a big part of recovery" Banister states. "Making sense of it all rather than continually self-medicating to create a barrier between oneself and the buried issue."Listen to the new album here:
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