Draag – Around My Fear

Draag began as a project to reissue songs that musician and songwriter Adrian Acosta recorded on cassette with a karaoke machine/dual-tape deck when he was 10: the young Adrian crafted an album every other week just for himself. These songs were reworked in 2013, and the next 4 years were spent somewhere in LA, exploring and expanding the project as a 5-piece. As plans for a full-length album emerged, illness and personal challenges thwarted recording/release plans. Recognising that creating music was a privilege, eventually resulted in the EP “Nontoxic Process” in 2018.  This year, on February 21st, their EP “Clara Luz” was released, together with single “Around My Fear“: an arcane, celestial track with arches of reverberated guitar-swells, translucent vocals, underpinned by spiralling but steady electro-beats. It clearly draws from 90’s shoegaze/ dreampop and reminded me strongly of Chapterhouse‘s “Pearl“, which is never a bad thing. The track reaches peak around 2:30 when it climbs to uncharted exaltation. Aural Bliss!

Acosta mysteriously refers to his own music as: “black and bruise colored rose, abrasive yet dreaming yet, uncorrupted feeling, clean/dirty pain, self-auscultation, deafeningly honest, haven’t given up.”