NoKillShelter, the musical brainchild of producer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Eckhart, premieres “Balanced Love,” featuring Mariah Priddy, on CelebMix.
While growing up, Nick Eckhart listened to Steely Dan, Johnny Cash, and Led Zeppelin. By the time he was five-years-old, he was playing the drums. Later, he played in a series of bands. It was when he was working at a Chinese Medical Center that he discovered meditation, which transformed his life and his music.
Meditation pushed him to take his music to the next level. So he set out to “learn the process of packaging art as a whole,” while simultaneously expanding his instrumental repertoire. Mentored by producers Tommy Hubbard and Dru DeCaro, Eckhart voyaged into the world of samples and synths, developing dream-like soundscapes replete with transcendent magnetism.
With his friend and fellow-drummer Tom McGoeoch, NoKillShelter debuts their first single, “Balanced Love.”
Vocalist Mariah Priddy explains the song, “Balanced love describes the blissful but fleeting moments of a one night lover. The yearning for the continuation and the bits of struggle when you begin to think it can be more than it is. And the transition to understanding that at the end of the day we have our own separate lives to live and that we must let those moments be as they are.”
“Balanced Love” opens on Priddy’s evocative voice supported by a crisp side-stick snare and creamy keyboards. As the rhythm gathers potency, sonic layers emerge on soft gleaming tones. Priddy’s delicious tones, backed by glowing harmonies, infuse the tune with flavors of restrained excitement mixed with melancholy, as she realizes love is elusive.
“Said we’re making love / Slow and settled / A long kiss on my head / But if every night was this calm and lazy, we’d never leave the bed / You’ve got me, I’ve got you / Just leave me in your welcome view / I know that this is hard to ask but I don’t know what you’re doing there, I’m just trying to do me / Just trying to do me.”
“Balanced Love” blends scrumptious melodicism with hints of emo-trap muscle into an affecting, gorgeous, and tantalizing tune. This is a low-slung seductive track, proving NoKillShelter has it going on!
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