Always gracefully walking the line between supreme creative power and global topical poignancy, UAE producer and artist Sarah R Jay drives along a particularly heart-breaking and thought-provoking pathway this season, with the intensely bold and beautiful EP STREETS OF GOLD.
Always a master of contrast in music, Sarah R Jay intertwines the delicacy of vocal whispers and synths, with the sheer weight and grit of a relentless techno rhythm. The project fires into gear with the intimacy and sudden pulsating presence of Fighting for the Heaven – Official Vocal Version, and rather than simply presenting an EDM pop-dance kind of familiar hit, the track offers an impressively alternative, almost folk-like poetic outpouring, and at the same time, proceeds to deliver one of Sarah R Jay’s most hard-hitting beats yet.
It’s an intoxicating mix, a superb balancing of seemingly opposed qualities, and in my view, this is the most distinct, memorable, and impactful track of Sarah’s to date.
The project then moves into the Dance Remix of Fighting For The Heaven, and completely envelops listeners from the outset, with vocal adlibs and euphoric synths cascading and elevating us, aptly towards the heavens. That euphoria and passion, the multi-coloured blissful escapism of the mix, is transformational, and fiercely awakening at its peak.
Finely, in keeping with her diversity at the helm, the mini-album concludes with a cinematic version of Fighting for the Heaven. Here we get cascading synths, strings, both fast-paced and gentle, surrounding and consuming us, as the emotional intensity peaks amidst lashings of intimate space and vastness carefully intertwined.
The drama rises, the beat unique as ever, the track feeling completely new yet also now cleverly and forever connected to this idea of Fighting for the Heaven. The final drop is sensational, stunning even – a true representation of the established conviction and talent of Sarah R Jay as a timeless house, dance and techno producer.
Conceptually, this EP seeks to present a journey through humanity and empathy. It’s an incredibly relevant and necessary ode to what’s possible right now, in the face of such division, destruction, and devastation globally. The EP takes on the tragedy of modern wars, and the true meaning of loss.
More than this, rather than simple heart-break and melancholy, the music resounds with a beating heart full of hope and possibility, and that quality rings loudly throughout each composition, and reaches an intoxicating crescendo during the final, unmissable cinematic version.
Rather than the more traditional creative focus on those who lost their lives, STREETS OF GOLD zones in on the families, children, and mothers, who are left alone in the world in the aftermath of war. The universal weight of being condemned to fight for a cause incited by the rich, seems endless. Sarah R Jay fuses creative freedom, attention to detail, and musical euphoria and escapism, to effectively capture the anguish and longing of this repeating circumstance, not least of all with stand out lyrics like ‘Trading our youth for streets of gold’.
In presenting these three versions of the original track, we get the depth and quiet desperation of the human voice and melody, followed by a floor-filler set-up designed to reach the younger audiences, and then to finish, the uplifting orchestral power of dramatic emotional substance and resolve.
“Footsteps fade in the mud of despair
A dream so bright now hangs in the air
We hold the line hearts ablaze
Chasing light through endless haze.”
Find Sarah R Jay on Instagram.
