Trance Family Lebanon
Whether the three years since Craig Connelly album-debuted with ‘One Second Closer’ feels long or brief is almost academic. For Craig himself the duration’s provided the ultimate in transformative phases, seeing him punch up from promising name to major contender. With the arenas and festivals getting bigger and his music drawing evermore DJ air & set time though comes ever-greater expectation.
That brings us to the ultimate of qualifiers: ‘A Sharper Edge’. Following the 8-million-Spotify-streams-and-counting ‘One Second Closer’, the album is another implicitly titled collection, alluding to Craig’s unlike-any-other approach.
At the core of its production lies something that is the result of – if not quite soul searching by Craig, then certainly some introspection. Whilst other artists root their album biases in the instrumental or the vocal, or a particular stylistic bandwidth, Craig composed his down four very specific thematic lines.
“I wanted to try a non-traditional approach to this album, says the Manchester born-and-based DJ, and I thought a little pre-production mental exercise might give me some insight. So before ‘A Sharper Edge’s day-one, I crunched what seemed important in my life and more and more four words kept popping back. So when I sat down to compose each track, I tried to bring one of the four – Destiny, Energy, Travel or Optimism to my foreground and subsequently channel it into that piece of music. Whilst all the tracks represent a more radio or club focused sound, every one was designed to have its own story – regardless of whether it has lyrics or not. Even the instrumentals were written with the intention of being anchored in a strong human emotion or feeling.” – Craig
