Review
Genre and Mood
Monkey Safari’s New Day is melodic electronic music made for the end of a night out. The premiere on Electronic Groove said it lives up to its title, evoking the feeling of leaving a club at dawn, and the album around it was described as warm, inviting music designed to brighten your day. Hence the feelings here: uplifting and warm.
Song Summary
New Day is the seventh of ten tracks on HI and runs a little over eight minutes. Its idea is a sunrise: the premiere heard the duo gradually reveal the track’s brighter side, like the sun rising over the horizon and spreading its warmth. It was written and produced by the brothers Lars Rühlemann and Sven Fröhlich and released on their label Hommage on 21 June 2019.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through New Day section by section; the premiere describes its arc, a slow brightening, so the breakdown follows that arc and leaves the detail to your ears.
Intro
No source describes how the track opens. On the premiere’s reading it starts in the half-light; listen for how much is held back.
Build-up
This is the track’s idea: the brighter side is revealed gradually rather than switched on. Listen for which layers arrive, and in which order, to make the light grow.
Main Section
The premiere does not say what the brightened track sounds like. Across the album, Electronic Groove heard emotive synthesizer lines, strings and keys aligned to keep a meditative atmosphere; listen for which of them New Day uses.
Outro
No source describes the ending. Notice whether the track fades back into half-light or stays in the morning.
Concepts in Focus
A build-up in club music usually means tension before a drop. New Day, as the premiere describes it, uses the slow version of the idea: eight minutes in which the music brightens step by step, the way dawn does, so the reward is the warmth rather than a single moment of release.
The track also lives on as a remix. When HI returned as HI (Remixed) on 28 February 2020, Lonya & Kadosh made a new version of New Day, about a minute shorter than the original.
Artistic Context
Monkey Safari are Lars Rühlemann and Sven Fröhlich, brothers from Halle in Germany who began working together in 2008 and in 2014 retired their earlier labels to focus on Hommage. HI, their third album, followed Odyssey; When We Dip heard it come together naturally, from a more relaxed place, and the duo said they had decided to step back from darker sounds. Martin Waslewski, heard in Martin Waslewski – Gerd, is another Halle producer who has released on Hommage.
Impact and Reception
Beyond its premiere, no source found here records how the track was received; what it has is the premiere’s image and the duo’s own words for the album: much more melodic and emotional now. If the patience of Tinush – Sandburg suits you, put this on at the end of a night, or at the start of a day.
