West Coast artist Restless Mosaic presents ‘Lost Within This Time’, the first taste of his forthcoming third album ‘Quality Mirrors’, due out on March 7. The song takes many surprising turns, all of them dark. Developed around elevator samples that came to form four separate layers of this song, this lead track features vocals by Anji Bee of renowned dreampop duo Lovespirals, singing ethereally and as claustrophobically as the slabs of the unsettling soundscape behind her.
In the video, Anji plays a ghost haunting an elevator. With Restless Mosaic (a.k.a. Brandon Isleib) and Anji Bee residing quite a distance from one another, they shot their scenes separately. Portraying a ghost who lures Isleib into her haunted elevator – where she lives in a concert poster. Now entrapped, she transmits his soul into the poster, essentially taking her place. Isleib explains, “My home city let me and my producer film in a city-owned office building that hasn’t been used in years – a perfect setting to make a campy ‘80s horror story”.
“‘Lost Within This Time’ is about my mental state post-pandemic. Like many, I’m finding it hard to re-acclimate. Places I used to go have closed. I quit doing the things I used to do. Many people I thought I knew either disappeared or showed sides that made me pull away. Society both on and offline seems much more hostile, and as a consequence I’ve become guarded,” says Anji Bee.
“Working with Brandon let me express my thoughts in a slightly edgier manner, as the instrumental he presented me with is a lot more experimental. The elevator sounds, in particular, are quite eerie, so I had fun playing that up with an ethereal refrain of “I’m lost” – which sounds like it could be a ghost calling up the elevator shaft, or wandering down a long, dark hallway.”
Brandon Isleib is an electronic songmaker based in Everett, Washington. The name Restless Mosaic derives from the idea of a mosaic’s intricacy and structure, and how the parts and the whole relate in a way that they only make sense when they come together. In the same way, he combines sounds and genres, usually considered disparate, connecting them into something greater than any one of them.
Through these song structures, transitions and balanced textures, and by anchoring certain aspects, the listener can enjoy grounded music and enjoy these sonic adventures – explorations that embody a sense of restlessness. Noted as offering up “a setting in which listeners can expect the unexpected” with music that is “a boon for your neuroplasticity”, Restless Mosaic’s music has been streamed over 3 million views via YouTube.
“I met Anji Bee through the listening party for the remaster of Love Spirals Downwards’ ‘Flux’ album. I had noticed she’d made a lot of different song styles, many of them dark, so I inquired about a collaboration. When she expressed interest, I started composing a sort of gothic metal song but swapping out all the sounds for ‘80s synth-jazz instead – something to fit both Anji’s angel and chanteuse sides,” explains Brandon Isleib.
“That fit nicely with samples recorded of a creepy elevator in a hotel I had stayed at, and I started building the next part of the song around that. That gave the most space for Anji to put a verse, but she surprised me by wanting to make the denser chorus music into the verse. The ensuing rearrangement yielded the unusual structure of starting as a full-fledged synth song, then going into a barely melodic industrial phase, then gradually introducing both halves to each other. I draw a lot of inspiration from Underworld’s production style: set up the song’s rules and then start breaking them. ‘Lost Within This Time’ does this while showcasing Anji’s versatility and ability to make the bizarre sound right.”
Anji Bee adds, “The frenetic, skittering energy in the first part seemed suited to my lyrics’ theme. The fretless bass reminded me of music I loved in the ’80s, like Mick Karn and Kate Bush. I tried to channel their vocal theatricality in my performance. Though I’m best known as a singer, I’ve dabbled in spoken word for decades, and I enjoyed incorporating a bit of that too. This is a personal lyric, but I think it’s pretty universal, and I hope that others in a similar period of their life will find some comfort in the song.”
Apart from Anji Bee, the ‘Quality Mirrors’ album features contributions by New York singer-songwriter Rose Alaimo and prolific rapper Declaime (Aloe Blacc, Madlib, and Flying Lotus), with whom Restless Mosaic is already working on a new album that brings Declaime’s poetry to Isleib’s back catalog of instrumentals.
As of January 14, ‘Lost Within This Time’ is available everywhere, including Apple Music, Spotify and Bandcamp. The full ‘Quality Mirrors’ album will be released on March 7.
CREDITS
Music written and performed by Brandon Isleib
Recorded, mixed and produced by Brandon Isleib and Anji Bee
Lyrics, melody and vocals by Anji Bee
Additional production and effects by Ryan Lum
Mastered by Vincent Villuis / Ultimae Records
Album artwork and music video by Jennifer Wee
Anji Bee photos and video footage shot by Anji Bee
Brandon Isleib photos shot by Jennifer Wee
LYRICS
Lost inside my mind
So lost within this time
Don’t know who I am
Or where I’m going to
Lost and I’m not fine
No reason and no rhyme
This life doesn’t make sense
What am I going to do
These past few years have been so hard
Trapped within these walls and my small yard
I’ve dropped out of society
I don’t think I’ll ever be
Who I was before I went on guard
I’m lost
I’m lost
I’m lost
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