il:lo & Dawa Salfati
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
il:lo don’t make electronic music for the background. Their sound demands attention — and on ‘Besides Everything’, the French duo turn down the volume on the outside world and let something far more interesting take over.
Built around Dawa Salfati’s beautifully restrained vocal, the track moves with the patience of a late-night thought you can’t quite shake. Ethereal guitars shimmer around a slow, organic drum pulse while synthesizers gradually expand and contract, giving the whole thing an almost physical sense of breathing. It’s electronic music with lungs.
What makes ‘Besides Everything’ particularly effective is its refusal to rush towards some enormous, hands-in-the-air payoff. Instead, il:lo understand that restraint can hit harder than excess. The track begins in a place of tension and uncertainty, then slowly opens out, replacing claustrophobia with space and possibility.
It’s an elegant piece of downtempo electronica, but there’s nothing sleepy about it. Beneath those delicate textures is a quiet sense of momentum — the feeling of something shifting, finally, after being stuck for too long.
The track is another strong indication of what’s coming with Lucent, il:lo’s forthcoming album. Across their work, Dejan Dejado and Andreas Schütz have developed a knack for making electronic music feel cinematic without becoming bloated, emotional without becoming sentimental. ‘Besides Everything’ takes that formula somewhere even more refined.
Salfati’s voice is the secret weapon: intimate, weightless and perfectly positioned within the production rather than simply sitting on top of it. Every layer has room to breathe, and that space becomes part of the song itself.
There’s a lovely contradiction at the heart of ‘Besides Everything’: it sounds simultaneously fragile and powerful. The pressure is still there, but it has stopped being the enemy. Now it’s fuel.
With Lucent due on October 16 via Nettwerk, il:lo look increasingly comfortable operating in that elusive territory between darkness and light. ‘Besides Everything’ is a gorgeous piece of electronic escapism — not an attempt to run away from the chaos, but a reminder that sometimes the best response is simply to stop, breathe, and let the noise fall away.
For more information: il:lo
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