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We first chanced upon Swiss duo Odd Beholder, aka Daniela Weinmann (vocals, guitar, composition) and James Vargnese (production, e-bass, synths), when researching our latest MPEGs Eleven column, collating the most interesting recent music videos. The short film for ‘Landscape Escape’, shot in Azerbaijan and created collaboratively with local people, is a stunning piece of work but the music, a delicate piece of pop confection, more than matches it for deft execution.

We are delighted, therefore, to host an exclusive 24-hour free download of a new, unheard song by the duo. The track, ‘Silence’, is the closing number from Odd Beholder’s debut EP, Lighting, which is released this Friday on Mouthwatering Records. Blessed with exquisitely weightless production, ‘Silence’ begins by slowly expanding, with Daniela Weinmann’s vocals floating over undulating guitar and purring bass, before exhaling via a long, gorgeous, airy drone. Silence has never sounded so good.

“When I wrote the song, I was playing around with my looper,” Weinmann explains. “I pressed the pedal at the wrong time, and my guitar pattern played back at me in a peculiar way. It’s the guitar riff you can hear on the track. I left it like that. It felt true because it was random. I had to learn how to play it later, it’s quite hard to sing over it.

“When I recorded the vocals, I imagined an abandoned train station. Nature had already begun to reconquer it. I felt the certainty that my love was a solitary one. I felt the beauty, the cruelty of nature. It is silent, it has no eyes to look at you. I felt the vastness of space, the abundance of it. The universe loomed around me, and it sort of smiled.”

Listen to ‘Silence’ by Odd Beholder above, and download it for a limited time from this link (expires at 12pm on Wednesday, 12th May).

Kier Wiater Carnihan