Some songs are like fireworks. They’re loud, flashy, exuberant. And then, there are songs that hug you, gently stroking your skin like a cool breeze in the summer heat. Darkness is one of these unobtrusive pieces. Nothing grabs you by the arm and aggressively pulls you, but more of an open, inviting gesture.
“The track is a living-room-sized hymn. A classy his-and-hers duet, singing of another time and another place,” Schmidiger explains. Along with the single, Tender Ender also shares a self-directed music video that matches the music’s calm character, observing the annual wheat harvest and capturing a swarm of red kites.
Negative White is proud to premiere Darkness, the new single and video by Swiss artist Tender Ender.
Swiss artist Thomas Schmidiger, aka Tender Ender, centres Darkness around a silky home organ, accompanied by the built-in rhythm section. The organ holds its notes forever, creating a canvas of sound, a backdrop for the intricate melodies of the vocals, piano, and guitar. Schmidiger’s baritone, paired with the breathy voice of Sabine Ruch, creates a soothing bittersweetness and comforting intimacy.
Regarding the video, Schmidiger says: “I like boring things. They tend to open doors you didn’t even know existed.” And so, this observation of an encounter among industrial agriculture, nature, and an indifferent landscape becomes more than mere visual accompaniment: like Darkness itself, it is an invitation to deliberately discover and reflect.
While Darkness quietly roams between melancholy’s bitterness and the sweet taste of hope, it morphs into a meditation for conscious dreaming. These velvety textures need to be touched again and again, eyes closed, to explore all its eclectic stitchings and weavings. They reveal the beauty and grace beneath, branching out from an embrace of something seemingly simple.
Tender Ender composes art with space to breathe, firmly against overproduced stimulation. Maybe this all makes Darkness easy to overlook, to skip, to scroll by. But be warned: passing it by means missing something far richer than today’s endless stream of attention-seeking content.
Tender Ender will release his sophomore album, Red Kites, on November 13. You can preorder the album on the website.
