Man­ches­ter-based five-piece band Syl­vette present their new track called Blan­ket of Dust today, 21st May. And how love­ly that got a launch morn­ing play on Chris Hawkins’ ear­ly morn­ing show on BBC 6 Music.

This lat­est release fea­tures ele­ments we’ve come to expect from Syl­vette but this has rather a dif­fer­ent feel. Blan­ket of Dust is a reflec­tive and melan­cholic num­ber with a fine­ly-tuned sense of dra­ma, an under­cur­rent which adds an air of ten­sion. There is more than a hint of Jeff Buck­ley in the crys­tal clear falset­to of Char­lie Sin­clair, set against a sparse and beau­ti­ful back­drop of acoustic gui­tar before a gath­er­ing swirl of strings ele­vates the song. Syl­vette make no com­pro­mis­es with their pro­duc­tions, they reward the lis­ten­er who takes the time to sit back, be still and let it all unfold. 

The band released their sec­ond album Stiller than Still in 2020, which includes the mys­ti­cal track Kelpius, review here.

Char­lie Sin­clair cred­its a 1990s film for the inspi­ra­tion behind the song: ”Blan­ket of Dust is direct­ly inspired by the film Shad­ow­lands about C.S Lewis in which he under­goes great per­son­al change through the trau­ma of his wife pass­ing away. His per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion isn’t grand or pub­lic but more qui­et, con­sid­ered and melan­cholic and I want­ed to reflect this in the feel of the song. 

”The film doc­u­ments a time in his life where for the first time he dares to open him­self up to love and he not long after expe­ri­ences the pain of los­ing it. It got me think­ing about the idea of how Joy and Pain are two sides of the same coin and the only way to live ful­ly is to brave­ly embrace the cer­tain­ty of both.”

Blan­ket of Dust is out now. Syl­vette have a UK tour planned for Autumn 2021
Syl­vette