Piercing and riddled with an adrenaline normally reserved for the dancefloor exclusively, the beat in Cristal Carrington’s “Another Way of Life” is definitely one of the biggest reasons why I would tell you to check the track out this fall, but hardly the lone attribute that makes this song such an infectious club number. From the moment we press the play button forward, it’s quite obvious that Cristal Carrington came to this party intending on lighting up the speakers with as much intensity in her melodies as she does her grooves, and whether it’s the percussive energy or the thrust of her own verses, you’d better believe that we’re getting just about everything she can muster from inside of the studio and then some.
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The vocal actually seems a little fragile at first, most because of its placement in the arrangement of the mix. Because it’s been tucked away between the layers of bass, percussion and synthetic melodicism in the song, there are moments in which her verse becomes slightly obscured, not unlike the sun on an overcast day – but this doesn’t last for very long. Even when she’s not singing, Carrington is utilizing her role – and the space it’s afforded in the track – to the fullest in expressing everything she can to us through lyrics and the harmonies that frame them the same, and if that isn’t working hard enough to make it in the mainstream element, frankly I do not know what is.
I really love the contrast in the ascent towards the chorus in “Another Way of Life,” and although it makes for a bit of anxiety in the bassline groove as we swing back towards the earth, there’s scarcely an instance in which it sounds as though the instrumentation is going to come apart at the seams here – the exact opposite, truth be told, would seem to be the case. There’s so much cohesion to the vocal and the melodic faceting beneath it in this single that there are moments where it’s hard to tell where one starts and another drifts into the silence, but even so, nothing ever gets so lost in the haze of ambience that we lose the definition in any of the more minute points of the track.
TIK TOK: https://www.tiktok.com/music/Another-Way-of-Life-6882976193528727554
Club-lovers can’t beat what Cristal Carrington has been cooking up for the world inside of the recording studio in 2020, and if you haven’t already stopped to take a peek at any of the numerous releases she’s dropped since the start of the year, I believe this song is going to have you quite interested in exploring her complete discography. This is an artist who is still in the process of becoming whoever – and whatever – she will ultimately solidify her reputation in this industry as, but judging from the ambitiousness of “Another Way of Life,” I would say we should expect a lot of good things out of her camp as she transitions into the next phase of her budding young career.
Troy Johnston