Six months since his honest confessional, DR35M5, Nerve Leak returns with the intense Moon Pulls and what a mind fuck it is. Already displaying a clear and high level of talent and growth between his Disconnected EP and DR34M5, the Brooklyn based artist continues to push his musical and personal boundaries. The moon may control the tides, but Moon Pulls controls you with each listen.
Over an ethereal soundscape with trap influenced beats, Nerve Leak sings, “your back’s turned to me/ spine arched, worn tailbone/ slanted before me like a deprived flower/ hurtling toward death,” detailing the moment that followed the passionate embrace of a long lusted after love. It’s an intimate experience and one you remember for a lifetime. As the song continues, glitchy pops and snaps and echoed vocals bounce within the bedroom, evocative of that moment of clarity between ecstasy and melancholy. When the peak arrives and vulnerabilities are exposed, the rawness in his vocals shine when he begs himself, “I taste your love between your thighs/ what did I do to deserve you?/ what can I do to keep you?/ to love you?”
In an email to Bullett Magazine, Nerve Leak explained:
“I was sitting on my bed with the windows open to my back. It was June, around 10 A.M. I had barely slept the night before and felt drunk, though I didn’t drink anything. The lyrics came out as a stream-of-consciousness attempt to express the intense feelings of embracing someone romantically after longing for them for over a year. I felt ecstasy from the embrace and melancholy from the leftover pain from hiding my feelings for so long. There were layers of trust—submissive and dominant—that felt raw and real in a way I hadn’t experienced.
It’s about that overwhelming feeling when you’re so tied up in someone that you ask yourself: ‘What did I do to deserve you? What can I do to keep you / to love you?’ When I decided to put the lyrics to music, I wanted to make the production dark and monochromatic, but also rhythmic and alive. Pairing hip-hop and trap-inflected beats with glitchy vocal samples of my voice, the music soars from low to high; soft to brash; submissive to dominant. The end result is a metaphor for how the moon controls the tides. The emotional and physical attraction I felt was like a command; I was pulled in.”
Moon Pulls is haunting and beautiful, and Nerve Leak is an artist that must be on your radar.