American musician Jon DeRosa, the mastermind behind ambient music project Aarktica, is hot off the release of the 2022 album We Will Find the Light.
It’s Aarktica’s first release of the year and follows up the 2021 collaborative album Blood Positive, a soundtrack for a short film of the same name.
The first single to be released from We Will Find the Light is the lengthy yet comforting “Can’t Say I’ve Missed You”.
Fans of Aarktica shouldn’t be that surprised by the song being 7 minutes and 23 seconds long (after all, this is the same guy that made a 73 minute album with just 9 tracks).
However, they will be surprised by how much singing (and yodelling) is within the track.
DeRosa doesn’t typically sing when making music under the Aarktica project; after all, it’s ambient, there’s not really meant to be that many words. However, the lyrics in this song, although not hugely substantive, add a lot to the track and help guide the song forward across its runtime.
DeRosa reminisces on the track about a previous lover and that, after all these years, he does not miss them. We don’t get a lot of details to extrapolate from as to why, but if anything it adds to the mystery of the song. It’s already atmospheric by itself, so the lack of details ends up adding rather than taking away.
On the Darla website, DeRosa had this to say:
“One of the very few songs in my life I’ve ever written in one sitting, start to finish. I also recorded the acoustic guitar and vocal live for this one, something I enjoy doing because I feel like it flows better, but rarely get to do in the studio.”
It seems to have been a very therapeutic song for DeRosa to record, and in return we get a very comforting track to listen to. The soft picking of acoustic guitar and ambient production hanging in the background is guaranteed to make anyone listening feel at ease.
