Synth Single Review: "Into the Dark" by Minute Taker

Minute Taker’s "Into the Dark" explores love, society and human complexity. The song commences as mournfully drifting synth moves with a shadowy edge before the pop rhythm jumps along with a strummed guitar. A sliding synth joins Minute Taker’s bittersweet voice as it weaves a thread of gently dreamy melancholy, and the guitar strumming adds rhythmic warmth.

As the piano shines, the beat propels the music while the chorus rises with hurt, hopeful emotion as the guitar bounces. The way in which Minute Taker combines brokenness and aspiration touches me. Each of the vocal layers combines with the string-like synth as it creates luminosity like a candle flame in a shadowy room.

The organic nature of the guitar strumming contrasts with the synth sounds in a way that deepens the song’s richness. Glimmering notes dance like a lamp while Minute Taker exhales with luscious gentleness and the piano skips with an easy lightness as the chorus rings with heart-filling emotion. A hint of minor-key darkness touches the music before the chorus glows with affectionate encouragement as the rhythmic pulse below throbs. The song carries to an end with the vocals grasping emotion and delivering it to my ears.

“If you’re waiting for the veil to fall,” our storyteller reminds the song’s subject, be sure that “the darkness is inside us” and be certain that stars which burned out eons ago “sparkle all around us.” He adds that “all the wars are fought to keep us safe.” While political leaders preach freedom, “we are chained in caves just watching shadows dancing as the world circles the fire.”

Both the narrator and the song’s subject know that they aren’t on their own and “together we’ll fall into the dark.” He goes on to say that they’ll never let go as they fall into the dark together. As humanity spins through time, “we live in fear of one day being nothing with stars above just bright enough for us to find ourselves in darkness.”

Anyone who insists that they know the truth is “either lying or deluded,” sending prayers to their empty deities “for happy ever-afters as they slaughter for their cause.”