Slow Arpeggio is Julian Sarkissian.
It’s a deeply personal projection through the medium of synth-infused pop rock. At times the music is playful, and at others somber, but Julian’s lyrics are always there to make it raw. Trying to pin it to a single genre may land you in a realm where LCD Soundsystem's long, exploratory, idea rich format and Vampire Weekend’s short, simplistic hooks and catchy melodies combine. Familiar in form and instrumentation, yet distinct in arrangement and production, Julian’s songs embody an Arcade Fire level of intimacy that make them so very… Julian.
“I’m usually toying with several ideas in any one song,” explains Julian. “Like in ‘Going Nowhere’ [the title track of his debut LP] I open with a four-measure synth melody and crescendoing pad to give the listener a taste of the chorus, but then I strip everything back to bass in the first verse and build from there. After the first verse is a guitar transition, which I use again later in the song. And then in the second verse I bring in a couple new percussion instruments, some faint background vocals, and a tinny synth that I had actually used in the intro. I like to do this a lot, to introduce things and bring them back to create a sense of familiarity and cohesion in the song. In the pre-chorus I bring in a female vocal and arpeggiating synth, and remove the filter off of the bass, letting it growl. And then the first chorus brings back the four-measure synth melody and let’s the pad from the intro sharpen like the bass. And after the guitar solo, the song has a long instrumental section that meanders through a soft piano to a rough electric guitar, back to a third verse very similar to the second in magnitude. And finally pre-chorus, chorus, outro. The song has many ups and downs, but overall, it rises in tension. It goes from a sort of calm or secure place to an angry and perhaps overwhelming place before fading in the outro. For a song that’s called ‘going nowhere,’ it sure evolves a lot. Which is perhaps a secondary meaning.”
For Julian, songwriting and recording are first and foremost about emotion—expressing it, exploring it, sharing it. As he describes, “It always starts with a feeling. Making the song is one way I can analyze it. The melodies and instrumentation, the production, help me effectively and enjoyably let the world know what I’m thinking. There’s a song on the new album [Leaving, slated for release on August 31] called ‘It Burns and I’m Tired’ where I’m wrestling with the inevitability of death. The percussion is very straight and methodical—like a clock—and there’s a scratchy sound layered in there that, if you listen carefully, is pitched like the ‘tick tock’ of a clock. It’s best heard at the very end of the song when the rest of the instrumentation is stripped away. It’s very important to me that the music can say something about the lyrics. Whether it agrees with the lyrics or disagrees with the lyrics doesn’t matter as long as you can find a purpose in each instrument.”
Julian acknowledges that his songs often explore darker topics. “The new album is centered around loss; about how it feels to let someone go and the realization that everything—including yourself—goes eventually. And, I’m okay with jumping into these darker places, but it’s not always doom and gloom. I’m a hopeful person!” he laughs. “I can turn the spotlight on all the joy and love life can bring as well. Like, for example, in ‘It Burns and I’m Tired’—arguably the darkest song on my new album—when I’m singing the final lyric ‘I don’t want to die’, I’m obviously extremely distressed, but I’m also acknowledging my morality, revealing the connection that I have with all the other living beings on earth. I feel somewhat secure because not wanting to die means that living is worth something. And I know I’m not the only one who’s felt the same.”
This balance of light and dark is at the heart of the name Slow Arpeggio. An arpeggio is a cycle of notes going up and down repeatedly. As Julian sees it, “Life is full of cycles, and is even a part of one itself: the cycle of life and death. And the ‘slow’ part is about zooming in, slowing down, and paying attention to little things, small moments. It’s about taking the time to see subtleties and express them in song.”
Slow Arpeggio began in 2018 when Julian was 14. Inspired by his favorite bands, Julian explored songwriting for the first time. He wanted to create music that could be loved by someone else as much as he loved his favorite music; he wanted to create music that would be important. Writing feverishly, he released songs on SoundCloud nearly every month. These were primitive and amateur, but heartfelt. His first major splash was “Dangerous Dancing,” garnering over 1,600 plays on SoundCloud, which ended up on Julian’s first LP, Going Nowhere in the spring of 2019. Branching off from SoundCloud and Bandcamp, Julian distributed the new album through DistroKid to streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. This didn’t get him much more attention, but at least there were more ways for people to potentially discover his music.
Julian continued writing. He experimented with style, texture, lyric, and form, trying to condense his songs to make them more digestible and concise; slick. He released three new singles in the second half of 2019, each showing a refinement of his songwriting skills. These and other new songs from his new album Leaving were featured in his first ever performance in early 2020 in Los Angeles. Having worked on his mixing, the songs on this new album pop more than ever. Its release is slated for August 31st of this year.