Review
Genre and Mood
Stee Downes opens his first album with Asunder, soul with a funk and pop accent from a man known until then as a DJ. The label heard a bittersweet undercurrent in the album and its maker called it heartfelt and honest; the warmth comes from the Irish Times, which heard warm, confident vocals and a warm, sunny feel. The three feelings are this page’s reading of those words.
Song Summary
Asunder is track one of All In A Day, released by Sonar Kollektiv on its illicity imprint in October 2008 and lifted as Downes’s first single. He wrote every song on the album from personal feelings and experience, and he and his old friend Ishfaq recorded it in April 2008 in a makeshift studio in Croatia in about two weeks, playing all the instruments themselves. Basic Soul called Asunder a mid-tempo highlight with simple, sing-along lyrics.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through Asunder part by part, so this breakdown follows the reviews, not a timeline.
Intro
Listen for what Downes puts first on his album: the band, the groove or the voice.
Verses
The verses carry the song’s story. Downes is a singer who, in Basic Soul’s words, does not overpower and stays within his abilities: notice how close the voice stays to the band.
Chorus
This is where the hooks the Irish Times praised should be: a simple line, made for singing along.
Outro
At five minutes and forty-nine seconds, the song has room to play itself out. Listen for which part of the arrangement is left at the end.
Concepts in Focus
A hook is the short idea a song is built to stick with you. Jim Carroll of the Irish Times picked Asunder, with Put A Little Love In My Soul, as the album’s tracks with “hooks and charms galore”, and as a suggested download.
The same review heard a mix that occasionally sounds a bit lumpy. mixing balances the recorded parts into one track; on a record made in two weeks by two players, with no mixing engineer in its Bandcamp credits, it is where speed shows.
In 2013 the Brazilian producer Gabe made a remix of Asunder for the Secret Place EP on OFF Recordings, filed under deep house: the soul song taken back to the clubs Downes came from.
Artistic Context
Downes is from Dublin and spent about a decade as a DJ, performing live with Amp Fiddler and Bugz In The Attic before he made this record. Sonar Kollektiv, the Berlin label founded by Jazzanova, released it, and Bo Kondren mastered it at Calyx in Berlin. Basic Soul heard 1960s pop, soul and funk in the album; Exclaim! heard keyboard grooves, mellow guitar and Latin-inflected rhythms.
Impact and Reception
The Irish Times gave All In A Day three stars out of five; Basic Soul called it “an impressive debut” and “a laidback feel good record that is warm and melodic”. Exclaim! liked the voice in small doses but found the album repetitive over its length. Asunder, first on the record and first as a single, is the place to judge: play it on a slow afternoon and wait for the chorus.
