It’s a sign of the times that music-making is becoming democratised at a quicker rate than some dubiously-run countries.
And now musicians have the freedom they’ve always wanted, they can move onto dealing with the next step – getting them heard over the white noise of everyone else doing the same thing.
In the meantime, let’s appreciate the wonderful advantages of this democratic system: artists like the distant, airy Pregnant.
Maybe Pregnant‘s subtly constructed wonder-pop is a sign of the conflation of the old and the new that you’d expect to have happened sooner.
Gentle, careful and dreamy, Pregnant’s Letter To A Friend is just as influenced by the never-ending momentum of the drum machine as it is by the wistful folk and cloudy psych that is eventually most prominent.
This artificial drive doesn’t allow the song to drift into self-indulgence, and so we are all winners, left with a song that is taut and minimal whilst billowy and vague. A blissful bridging of the gaps.