Track Review: Ellyn Woods & Sterling Grove: Wake Up

‘Twangs of guitar, techno beats, and reverberating bass lines transport us to a tropical paradise throbbing with heat.’


Intro to Ellyn Woods & Sterling Grove
As summer rolls over the UK, a lot of us are dreaming of leaving our grimy cities behind and escaping to far-flung tropical destinations. Unfortunately, the freedom day of June 21st has just been pushed back. Here to save us with some sonic escapism though is Canadian singer-songwriter Ellyn Woods with her new track ‘Wake Up’.  Woods and Sterling Grove have worked together before way back in 2015 on chilled out techno track ‘Sound Of Home’, and their latest collusion proves equally mesmerising.

Track Review 
Just as her name suggests, Woods creates dizzyingly wild soundscapes in new release ‘Wake Up’. Opening with heavy atmospheric textures created by reverbing guitar chords and Woods’ almost-eerie vocals, listeners quickly find themselves enveloped by the building instrumental. 

It’s easy to get lost in the layers of electronic and organic sounds. Electronic tweets and trills echo around like birds , creating a sense of immersion and enhancing the vividity of tune. As the song progresses the listener continually feels themselves following Woods’ siren-esque voice deeper into the sonic forest, the outer world slipping away further at every moment. 

Like contemporaries Jungle or Sylvan Esso, Woods and Sterling Grove have created a tune that builds its own tropical paradise and throbs with heat. Layer upon layer of musicality builds, twangs of guitar mesh with techno beats and reverberating bass, urging the audience to move. An insanely danceable beat smoothly builds before hypnotising electric guitars slide in immediately conjuring images of hot, packed clubrooms, filled with spinning rainbow lights that filter through glittering smoke. 

Throughout Woods’ voice flows around the instrumental, her repetitive lyric ‘starting to wake up’ mirroring the haziness of the instrumental. The guitar motifs mirroring the vocal, adding to the thick blanket of sound. Acting like a portal to another world, one that we would all love to be part of it’s gorgeously transportive. Likewise, with Woods’ gently brings her audience out of their reverie, and back to the real world through the gentle, soft fade, there is the most satisfying of conclusions. With the ‘Cabin Days’ EP on its way, we can’t wait to take another trip into Woods and Sterling Grove’s mystical world.

Review Feature by Ella McLaren

Ellyn Woods:           Sterling Grove:

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