With more than three decades shaping sound across continents, Paul Frazer Clarke has long been an architect of modern music. From co-writing and producing the world’s first Drum & Bass album to contributing compositions for Oprah Winfrey, National Geographic, and BBC projects, his fingerprints stretch across genres and generations. Now, with Backstories from a Soundtrack to Life (AWAL, Sept 2024), Clarke returns to his roots as a songwriter and producer and distills years of experience into finely tuned, intimate tracks. Among them, “You’re My Breath,” created in collaboration with canifallasleepnow, stands out.
The track unfolds like a slow exhale, built on ambient, R&B, downtempo music and catchy, moody, slow beats that hit with a glitz. The production comes immersive in its pocket of reflective calm, over which the tender, husky voice comes, thick with warmth and soulfulness, as he sings sensually and vulnerably.
The hook, “You’re my breath, breath, fill it in my chest, you are the only one I need,” is powerful in its surrendering intimacy, which evokes dependence and intimacy at its rawest level. Breath is life itself, and by equating a lover with breath, Clarke shows the feeling of love as essential, inescapable, and sustaining. There’s an implicit fragility too, without breath, there is silence, without love, an emptiness.
As the song flows, each beat lands like a heartbeat, steady yet emotive, while soft melodic lines wrap around the vocal like smoke curling in dim light. Listen to the timeless songwriting and the touching soft musicality of “You’re My Breath” by Clarke on Spotify.
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Review by: Naomi Joan