Track By Track: Duran Visek of birthday on his Subtle Love EP

It was age 18 that Duran Visek - raised in Florida, now living in California, and the man behind birthday - began to start working on the music and aesthetic that would come to form this EP and birth his career. Through the five tracks we get the chance to hear how the past three years have shaped birthday’s sound, as Visek talks us through his tracks, lyrics and inspirations.

Grown Up Kids

“This song represents the feeling of home to me. It’s about the little moments that make up what I find to be the most nostalgic and pure. “Places that we took back / hangin' off the side of the deep end / Ignoring the moment” that line perfectly captures the essence of the song.”

Subtle Love

“Subtle Love” is about pure emotional warfare. It's a tune that came together from a science experiment in May 2015. One night I was jotting out loose thoughts on a notebook while listening to a track on loop. I think my head might’ve been a bit jet-lagged from a long distance relationship I had been trying to fix. There were tiny pieces of wordplay that got toyed with over and over, until eventually the vibe became really clear. That’s when the song slowly started to appear out of nowhere. It reminds me of being equal parts in love, and flat-out exhausted, and the cat-and-mouse game that follows with that.”

Parade

“Parade” was like painting an adventure on a giant canvas. It started with the track after I had been on a huge Twin Peaks kick. I was on synth detail trying to play with hip hop samples and mellotron-like keys for days, executing the twinge of an idea with just a beat and some pretty sounds. The lyrics were assembled parallel to the track once the drop had a real personality to it. I just wanted in this song to bring people through one my favorite feelings of curiosity and being really passionate about wanting to discover something. Whether it’s a new place or person, or a new feeling or a burst of nostalgia, I wanted to get that down on paper. It’s also based on the urgency behind that. The hunger of curiosity is definitely fun, but once you add the pressure of time it becomes a real life situation. “All I want is more than ever to stay this way”, is just a call out to sticking with that gut feeling and making it last while it’s still there.”

Babyface

This song is an ode to a secret relationship - maybe one that is maintained late at night by sneaking through sliding glass doors out back and borrowing bikes to ride around a poorly lit town for fun. The problem is always that it’s unhealthy to hide love. It slowly started to creep into my personal memory of a relationship I had as a teen. And as the song became more realized, the more I drifted towards that feeling; the feeling of embracing something for what it was but knowing that the deeper the investment, the harder it’ll hit if not properly taken care of.

Cathedrals

And finally, “Cathedrals”. This one is a gem that sprang purely from a melody over a chord progression. If there’s something that jumps out at you, I think it’s fair game to dig it out and expose it. “Talk all night / take me to the taller hours / I will not be fine” was a thought left over in my notes. I started spinning into a dream of these two tortured souls; narrated by one of them, he twists and turns in the verses, reminded of this person. It’s a back and forth game of honest reaction and indecision which pours into the feeling of “why am I doing this”. As we hit the chorus, it had to be everything that happened, and in a way that could make sense as soon as possible. At the end of it all, even the most vile and terrible things can be resolved if you have someone that special.