Synth Single Review: “Purple Dream” by Binary Affair

by Karl Magi

Binary Affair’s “Purple Dream” establishes a plaintive drift above bass currents, calling to mind a city sinking into a neon-lit night, sliced by blinding notes before the rhythmic undercurrent thunders to increase the shadowy drama. Descending notes float as if suspended in space before the lead singer captures loss and the messy emotion of deep attraction with her clear, clean vocals.

Concentrated luminosity echoes above the even underlayer while the lead singer seizes emotion with unadulterated feeling. The song paints imagery of rain drenched pavement and towering skyscrapers, a city impersonal and full of hollow people.

Portentous heaviness below the echoing vocals emphasizes emptiness and churning need as the melody swells with dreamy gentleness and ominous weight. As the song closes, sensations of late night drifting spill outward.

Recognizing the ghost that's in her room, the storyteller can smell "rain and your perfume." After swearing she wouldn't call the song's subject again, she finds herself "shivering beneath my skin." People describe their shared love as a haunted street and she says it's "a bitter cold in the summer heat."

Calling the song's subject the moon and herself the sun, our narrator points out that she’s "too far gone to ever run." Her fingers trace the other person's name on frozen glass and she watches the "lonely hours slowly pass." Seeing a flicker in the blank grayness, she adds, "I wish the dark would just fade away. "

As the song concludes, the storyteller says, "the city lights are a lonely blue, I'm driving fast just to get to you. I feel the heat in the frozen air, I'll find the love that I know is there."