I got used to dealing with it: that moment when someone’s ‘life breeze’ is replaced by an eerie silence. It’s like there’s all this energy swirling in the room, and suddenly, in a dramatic moment, a cap is put on the flame and it’s only your breathing in the room. That experience came from being there as an end of life advocate for cancer/AIDS patients, as that final moment came. These people were the forgotten ones, left to Medicaid and abandoned by friends and family who couldn’t bear to see their worst fears manifested in the bodies of people they cared about.

I identified with them: as cancer riddled my brain, I felt entirely alone in the whole arduous ordeal. When you’re close to death, it’s all the little things that you get stuck on. Fearing that my treatment might destroy me, I used to worry about whether I left the water running, whether or not I had more than enough food for my cat in case no one found me for a while, and—as Until The Ribbon Breaks puts it so poignantly—‘leaving on the light on in my room the day [I] died.’ None of that came to pass, but it’s bizarre the places your mind goes. You think it would be all grand gestures, and it’s all about the boring particulars of life, all the little things others have to clean up after the fact.

Only great music can capture the intensity and complexity of those thoughts, and Until the Ribbon Breaks’ new track, “I Will Remember You”, packs a knowing, gut-wrenching sucker punch to each and every one of his lyrics. Music that matters, that tells a story that needs a witness to bear it, carries its emotions on soundwaves across the aural spectrum to anyone’s ears that hear it. And Until The Ribbon Breaks’ vocals absolutely waste me. It’s nearly impossible for me to listen to this track without crying—in fact, twice during writing this I had to put my head down on my desk.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s the kind of experience that I live for with music; and it reminds me evermore why Until The Ribbon Breaks is my favorite new artist this year.

Check out the new single below, replete with breathtaking images that mingle the song’s metaphors with cinematic art that will be impossible to divorce from your experience of the song after one viewing. After that, follow him on Facebook and Soundcloud.

52

Add to the story...