UK lo-fi indie artist Daniel John Marsden has been releasing music – sporadically – for over a decade. His new single ‘An Owl’ is his 3rd release of 2025 and, as Marsden explains, explores themes of time and repeating patterns.
Opening with electronic sounds and guitar plucks, things flutter and hum left and right. As a sound becomes caught in a loop, it’s like some ancient device is being rebooted.
The drums sound huge, the snare like a firecracker. Each note of the expansive bass is stretched and left hanging in the air. Earthy, lo-fi guitars add a real tape-worn texture and a deep haze to the track.
Daniel’s vocal sits perfectly in the mix. Double-tracked to add width, it still retains its intimacy and has a smoky, grainy tone. The melody feels restrained, with beautifully delicate shifts and gentle flourishes.
The lyrics repeat, circle and interrupt themselves as they return to one central existential question – it’s an interesting exercise in lyrical scanning and made the song feel nicely off-centre to me.
It’s a recursive state that, It’s a recursive state that
Predates everything, I wanna
Get ahead of this thing, I wanna
Get out of here, but there’s nowhere to go
The weight of the track creeps up on you, building until the end, vocals repeating, synths bleeping, and drums crashing like waves breaking on the shore.
As we reach the end, that returning question is repeated, and everything reaches a thundering crescendo – will the wise owl ever give us an answer…?
What if I’m from the past and replaced myself and
What if I’m from the past and replaced myself and
What if I’m from the past and replaced myself and
Probably not
Written by Grubby
