David Maine is not your average DIY bedroom artist coming out of Brooklyn. For starters he’s the only one I have seen brave enough to try and single handedly bring back the middle part, and I gotta say he’s making it work more than I woulda guessed. Furthermore the man is a classically trained pianist and has musical talent in his blood, with his brother being none other than Aaron Maine of Porches. David spent the past several years as the bassist for Frankie Cosmos, traveling the country and taking in a wide variety of sonic influences. Recently he has spent the better part of the past two years cooped up in his bedroom figuring out what his sound was. Those years of solitude proved to be fruitful and have culminated in his new project which David has named Floated. He has released a few singles under this name in anticipation of his upcoming self-titled EP, and his most recent, “Separate”, is easily his best yet.
You might imagine given both his experience on the bass and the music made by his close friends and family that David would opt for a lo-fi guitar heavy sound, but on “Separate” he sounds more like the Disclosure brothers than his own brother or Frankie. Previous singles have taken inspiration from everything from vaporwave to modern melodic rap crooning, showing quite a bit of versatility, and here David is channeling the energy of garage and deep house. On “Separate” David coos away in his icy falsetto about coming to terms with a love lost, singing, “I know that you’ll be okay, I know that I’ll be okay. Don’t we all separate,” as if he’s trying to convince both himself and the person he’s talking to that is true. David feels like a specter floating above the airy house bounce, which left me swaying back and forth like the shifting tide. His voice has a trance like quality and can at times be otherworldly, like the unfortunate end of his relationship left him singing in some sort of purgatory as the rhythm of the beat tries to ground him back in reality. “Separate” is the perfect song to dance to forget to. When I close my eyes I can see the smoky dance-floor and the endless sea of shuffling feet and Modelos that should be populating H0L0 or Elsewhere as “Separate” washes over everyone.
“Separate” is the fourth single out from Floated’s self titled EP which is due out later in the fall. While I don’t know whether David and Caucasian James will be successful in their noble attempt to bring back the middle part, I know one of them will keep me grooving all autumn long.
Give Floated’s new single a listen on Apple Music or Spotify and give David a follow on insta for updates on when the is EP dropping!