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October 23, 2020 - Rogue Neon
Steve Mesmin, establishing himself in the ranks of soulful electronic singer-songwriters as Nuit Oceān, mixes broken-hearted vocals with broken-hearted piano and mournfully glitchy production that somehow summates to something less depressing and highly captivating. Mesmin discusses love as a path inward and outward simultaneously. FIRE DIVINE finds melancholy and exaltation in one sphere, calling to mind poets like Rumi and Neruda.
Born and currently based in Bordeaux, France, travel has marked the evolution of Mesmin’s sound, from living and working in London, to time spent in India and his father’s home country of Zaire/DRC. Mesmin’s mother, from Algeria, filled their lives with music as she played the saxophone, leading to an early urge to create. Parallels between his multi-genre inspiration and his multinational heritage allows Fire Divine to bring us the foreign and present it as the obvious. Impressive moments of intelligent mixing are fast out the gate. In ‘ROSE’ production chops flash as a piano trill preludes a mirrored vocal glitch. The strange is made so familiar that novelty registers as de ja vu.
It’s not a trick. It’s the result of immense soul-searching and the effect of roots. Each song is daring. As the traveler goes, there are only so many comforts one can take with them. And this lean-to shows up in the rich, but spacious tracks of FIRE DIVINE. Mesmin’s latest EP is an excellent get-away and an inescapable meditation. ⛰️