Newton Faulkner - Clouds

This track is a 4/4 track at 84bpm powered with a 'stomp and clap' type of pulse that supports layers of acoustic guitar, vocals and some synths. The dynamics between sections are my focus for this entry as they quite impressive to me. In addition there are some heavily layered sounds in here that i'd like 'unpack'.

The first thing that impresses me in this track is the great impact that comes with each chorus. Listening at 1:43 (just before the second chorus) we can hear a subtle sweep of sounds that drop much heavier than expected. The reason I believe this works so well is the drop off in volume at the end of the verse which makes the next swell of volume build higher than expected. On my second listen I've noticed that the swell before the first chorus is far less intense. It consists of what sounds like a reverse cymbal where the second one holds the reverse cymbal and bass. The extra detail that goes into making the second chorus more powerful and impacting than the first is indeed very well executed. Jumping to 3 minutes in there's a massive snare drum accent that builds the third chorus to the maximum.

Listening to the 'snare' on beats two and four I feel I can hear three clap sounds above a tight snare that occasionally plays around the clap's back beat. This around the beat snare often acts as a drum fill that in other productions would be played around tom toms. The reason I've described this sound as the 'stomp and clap' is probably because of some other famous tracks that have used this sound and the fact that it is usually an audience participation thing so we hear many overlapping layers. As for vocals, they are clearly double-tracked and supported by backing vocals which are layered in the distance.