first, listen to the song:

I can’t get “Oxytocin” out of my head. In fact, it is so relentlessly stuck in there that Leo Pastel still not being one of web3’s most well known artists became the tipping point for starting this onchain music review account. Essentially, I set up anonymous accounts on twitter, email and notion just to attempt to showcase the beauty of "Oxytocin" to you. Let’s dive in.

First second of the first chord and alarms start ringing - “what was that?”, you wonder at the seemingly clashing notes - and you’re feeling conflicted. By the third chord, you’re in a groove, and when the fourth and fifth chords hit in half time to break the pattern, you know you're in for a wild ride. Now that we know what we’re dealing with, we get one more round to fully take in the clean spacious piano that will carry us through our adventure, where the brushy static and the clacking of the keys help build up the song’s foundation.

And then that bass line comes in. I could talk about this baseline all day. This bass line has been the soundtrack of my life for the past 2 days, playing rent free in my head, and I have not grown any less excited about it. This bass line should be played live one day (soon) by Thundercat. This bass line could exist alone on a track and I would still listen to it.

However, we can't focus on the bass for too long because Pastel's smooth isolated voice comes in, being simultaneously rhythmic and melodic, drawing you in quickly. As the song leaves space for the voice to intertwine with the bass, we begin to grasp the piano’s nostalgic chords as they blend with desires to go back in time and regrets. Bringing in stacked voices on the word “borderlines”, the song turns a verse progression into a chorus, which is no easy task.

Not much has changed, yet everything has. The chorus continues with the same progression, but now all of Pastel’s voice range fills your space layer by layer. You notice the slight irony in experiencing a chemical high from this song as he talks about trying to find hormonal highs that he himself is used to. The melody goes in circles as he talks about being back again repeating cycles that never end, and we get the strange opportunity to have a melody that sounds like what is being sung about.

Using the next verse to communicate the frustration of letting our minds consistently take us on trips down memory lane, we get to immerse ourselves in the all-too-familiar feeling of being distracted by our own thoughts. But the bass line keeps us in focus.

In an era dominated by beats, where songs are often built around them, you almost forget that there are no drums or percussion in this track. The bass carries the song perfectly, accompanied by the piano’s single high B flat that acts as a metronome on almost every 2nd and 4th beat and maintains a slight eeriness throughout the track.

Although we wish this song would go “on and on and on”, we can only spend 2:37 at a time inside the world Pastel and Glasstempo created for us. Released in the middle of a crypto bear market, Oxytocin reminds us that highs come and go and cycles repeat, that we’ve been here before. Only this time, instead of feeling stuck and used to it, we get to experience Pastel’s and Glasstempo’s art and be a part of their journey. As Pastel inches closer to surrendering to never-ending cycles and constant change, you leave the song with a hopeful optimism that highs may come and go, but good music lasts forever.

More on the song:

Date of mint: February 16th, 2023

Mint details: 0.03 ETH, 41 mints (sold out)

Current price: no editions up for sale, last sale 0.035 ETH (Feb 2023)

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