"I’ve seen medusa / I’ve seen storms / I lived to see them wither and crawl / I’ve seen myself thaw / I gave them my time / Weathered their thorns..."
The rustic folk beauty of "I Will Be My End" by Rapt, the musical moniker of London singer-songwriter, musician Jacob Ware, feels so endearingly happy and sad, feels so drawn from classic acoustic story spinning as if seeded from stone homes that once existed in North Yorkshire or Canterbury, Kent. This is to say that "I Will Be My End" feels like one of those forever songs, ever existing, always here like a fable, like a parable. Ware's voice goes down easily, embracing you around the shoulders like a friend. Melancholy and sagely there is a grace to his vocal melodies here and Demi Haynes' supportive female vocal adds such an utterly special element here as well. The poetry contained in the lyrics also feel grounded in nature, gently scarred by the passage of time.
"I’ve seen medusa
I’ve seen storms
I lived to see them wither and crawl
I’ve seen myself thaw
I gave them my time
Weathered their thorns
I’ve seen butchers be kings
I’ve seen terrible things
All the creatures have fallen
To teach us these things
Will we see
This will be our end"
I’ve seen storms
I lived to see them wither and crawl
I’ve seen myself thaw
I gave them my time
Weathered their thorns
I’ve seen butchers be kings
I’ve seen terrible things
All the creatures have fallen
To teach us these things
Will we see
This will be our end"
"I Will Be My End" is the first single released from Rapt's upcoming fifth album "Until the Light Takes Us", dropping on February 21, 2025.
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[While the album’s title is an explicit reference to the 2008 black metal documentary of the same name, Ware’s primary mode here is crushingly beautiful bardic folk. Lead single “I Will Be My End” is reminiscent of Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, if Drake somehow traveled forward in time to find himself captivated by Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (the sole video game Ware claims to play). Ware’s melancholic fingerpicked melody underlines a tale of grasping at agency in the face of a failing body. The opening line “I’ve seen Medusa / I’ve seen storms” is in reference to his struggles with both early onset rheumatoid arthritis and epilepsy, the former of which prevented him from playing guitar for a full year. It sets the tone for a sort of bleak, heavily conditional optimism that colors a record fixated on “ends” and how we press on when inevitable doom is just over the horizon.]
"I Will Be My End" is one of those songs that feels so utterly relatable and utterly artful that placed on any playlist of any genre, it will be that song that turns heads, raised the antennae and becomes a special moment of reflection. Those reflections might be cosmic, existential on mass or exquisitely personal and maybe more reflective for those of us who are in the last third of our lives. There is a sense in this song that there are passages in one's life that begin and end, that are birthed and that die. Maybe these emotional life cycles prepare us in some way for our eventual departure. Maybe (in this song) Ware is time itself (?). While I listen to the acoustic guitar shapes that have that glittery ringing high end strings sometimes mirrored sometimes counter poised by sparse guitar as a framework for Ware's endearing tale, I could, if in one of those moods, shed a tear.
-Robb Donker Curtius
https://open.spotify.com/artist/41r45fPBmAlIuPVsu6I62A
https://rapt.bandcamp.com/album/until-the-light-takes-us-3
https://www.facebook.com/raptfolk
https://www.instagram.com/raptfolk
Jacob Ware is Rapt, but what Rapt is isn’t so simple. The London native describes it as less of a typical music project and more like a label, in which he just so happens to play the part of each artist. Ware first cut his teeth in the UK’s extreme metal scene as the founding bassist for Enslavement, but this belies the directions he would later take his music when striking out solo. His self-titled 2018 debut was a series of serene, stretched ambient instrumentals, while subsequent releases None of This Will Matter and Drouth saw Ware explore swirling, reverb-saturated singer-songwriter fare and a techno twist on the ideas from Rapt, respectively. Brand consistency be damned, Ware’s an artist’s artist: helplessly compelled from one idea to the next.
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://open.spotify.com/artist/41r45fPBmAlIuPVsu6I62A
https://rapt.bandcamp.com/album/until-the-light-takes-us-3
https://www.facebook.com/raptfolk
https://www.instagram.com/raptfolk
Jacob Ware is Rapt, but what Rapt is isn’t so simple. The London native describes it as less of a typical music project and more like a label, in which he just so happens to play the part of each artist. Ware first cut his teeth in the UK’s extreme metal scene as the founding bassist for Enslavement, but this belies the directions he would later take his music when striking out solo. His self-titled 2018 debut was a series of serene, stretched ambient instrumentals, while subsequent releases None of This Will Matter and Drouth saw Ware explore swirling, reverb-saturated singer-songwriter fare and a techno twist on the ideas from Rapt, respectively. Brand consistency be damned, Ware’s an artist’s artist: helplessly compelled from one idea to the next.
Rapt, singer songwriter, folk, dream folk, classic folk, folk indie, rustic folk, storytelling folk, fables, parables, Jacob Ware, London, 5th Album "Until the Light Takes Us", second single "I Will Be My End",
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