Elegant Slims Makes Ghoulish Synth-Pop for Your Breakup
Music

Elegant Slims Makes Ghoulish Synth-Pop for Your Breakup

By Jael Goldfine

Elegant Slims, from her single-song Spotify page to her anonymous identity, is a mystery. The NYC-based artist released her first single, a moody Hype Machine favorite, "Not Human" in February, to a round of intrigued blog chatter.

Today, she's given us another subtle taste of her The Knife-meets-Evanescence techno-leaning synth-pop with sophomore single "Hemisphere" — a churning and pulsing ode to romantic obsession with an immersive sound to match its name. The moody-sweet track's forceful production is thick, dark and stormy as her vocals are elegant, light and clear, erupting into turbulent swells of synth. In both the song's construction and her eerie lyrics — "with your hand tethered to my wrist / we dive deep in the abyss / we go so low to get so high" — Elegant Slims perfectly conjures both the volatility and euphoria of the intense infatuation where you lose yourself in another person.

There's a gothy, ethereal bleakness to the track that explains the cover art: a series of equally terrifying and beautiful muted paintings of black-eyed cadavers by Norwegian visual artist Linda Helene Syvertsen.

Elegant Slims says of the track: "The production of the song has a heavy eerie quality that perfectly matches the story. It's haunting and disorienting. It feels like the track breathes which is exactly what I wanted as the main characters are floating and spinning and sort of chasing each other, tied to each other. They are moving through time and space together with the music, it's a beautiful mess."

Listen below and stay tuned for Elegant Slims' upcoming projects.

Cover art by Linda Helene Syversten