Following freshly after his Osheaga slot announcement, Edwin Raphael has shared his looping new track, “Have You Been Told.”
The single shows the Dubai-born, Montreal-based indie folk songwriter in a delicate light, mixing familiar acoustic melancholy with Eastern-style scales.
“‘HYBT’ steers through the fixation of constant repetitive cycles from a place that is ‘all blown up’ to ‘all so bare’. It’s the conflicting pursuit of stimulation vs stability,” says Raphael about the track.
“The phrase ‘have you been told’ suggests the idea of keeping the devil on your shoulder at ease by satisfying it in small doses as well as constantly sort of reminding yourself to check yourself. Essentially the song explores a medium ground where there is a balance between the two.
The music video matches both the spiraling instrumentation of the song and Raphael’s lyrical vision, showing him navigating between two different worlds. “Edwin and I really tried to put forward a strong narrative for the song, and with the song being this hypnotic loop, it was essential to flow in tandem with the various melodies on display,” says Jonathan Frydman, co-director and editor of the music video. “What we came up with was a storyline where the protagonist finds himself in between two places connected through a portal (the painting), where he realizes neither world is quite right as much as he’d like to believe it. The balance has to be found within oneself.”
Stream “Have You Been Told” here.
