Emotional maturity manifests through a myriad of different guises; in Kael Strahm’s seminal single, Blinded By Your Light, it takes form through grandeur-augmented darkwave synth-pop. The first single from his upcoming EP, From The Heart, introduces the New Wave and alternative-pop solo project as a shadowed extension of emotions that could never quite fit inside his dark-rock band, Halevine.
Through the gothic glow of reverb, with synth tones carrying the solemn weight of church organs, Blinded By Your Light becomes the ultimate aural visualisation of limerence. Strahm uses the tonality of the arcane instrumentals to mimic almost paralysing infatuation, where admiration becomes fantasy, fantasy becomes obsession, and an ordinary person is raised into something unreachably ethereal.
His baritone vocals ground the instrumentals while giving the single its self-reproachful tension. For fans of Kraftwerk’s synthetic severity, New Order’s melancholic motion and the romantic darkness of Sisters of Mercy, the single feels like a summons to meditate on everything you think you know about love. It asks what happens when lust affixes an idea to a person in the vain hope that the person has no autonomous blueprint of their own.
Blinded By Your Light offers no grand resolution, only the bitter recognition of love losing its way. That is where Kael Strahm finds the song’s real power.
Blinded By Your Light is now available on all major streaming platforms, including SoundCloud.
Review by Amelia Vandergast