“Suffocating Swan” - Melting Phase
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
Every now and then, a song comes along that doesn’t just ask to be heard—it demands you stop, sit in silence, and let it take you somewhere uncomfortable. Suffocating Swan, the latest single from Istanbul’s rising experimentalist Melting Phase, is exactly that kind of track. It’s not background music. It’s not Spotify fodder. It’s a fierce, allegorical meditation on life’s crushing weight, dressed in sonic textures that are as suffocating as they are strangely beautiful.
Written back in 2023 but only now seeing release in September 2025, Suffocating Swan feels like it’s been brewing in a pressure chamber all this time—layers upon layers of acoustic and electronic instruments, stitched together with obsessive care until the whole thing quivers with tension. There’s something almost cinematic about it: violins cutting through waves of synths, acoustic drums colliding with programmed beats, basslines crawling under glitchy textures. It’s chaotic, but in a way that feels deliberate, like a living organism fighting against its own cage.
The allegory is clear in the title. The swan—a symbol of grace, purity, even transcendence—here becomes a creature under duress, gasping for air in a world of concrete and steel. You hear that in the music itself: fragile melodies open the track, hesitant and tentative, but soon they’re buried beneath heavier, harsher sounds. By the midpoint, the song doesn’t just tell you about the crushing pressure of life—it sounds like it.
That’s the paradox at the heart of Suffocating Swan. It’s bleak, yes—Melting Phase admits openly that this isn’t music for everyone. It’s for “lost souls, dying souls, souls crushing and harshly going through life.” But it’s not nihilistic. There’s resilience in there too. The grace never fully disappears, even when it’s smothered. By the time the track closes, you’re left with a haunting sense of catharsis, as though the struggle itself—tragic as it is—was worth witnessing.
And let’s talk about the craft. This is the first Melting Phase track to be mastered professionally, and you can hear the difference. The dynamics are sharp, the layers distinct yet woven into one coherent storm. For a self-produced artist, the ambition is remarkable: to merge violins with synth pads, to pit acoustic drums against electronic pulses, to create a hybrid world where organic and synthetic instruments clash like forces of nature.
But what makes this release significant isn’t just the technical polish. It’s the narrative. This isn’t a song you can cut into a 30-second TikTok clip; it has a deliberate arc, a beginning, middle, and end. It tells a story without words, moving from fragile beauty to intense struggle and, finally, to resolution. It feels less like a track and more like the opening chapter of something bigger—which is exactly how Melting Phase describes it. Suffocating Swan is a cornerstone of a larger artistic project exploring “grace under pressure,” and if this is only the first piece, we’re in for an immersive, potentially devastating ride.
Verdict: Suffocating Swan is not for the faint of heart—but for those willing to step into its darkness, it offers something rare: an honest, visceral reflection of what it feels like to fight for breath in a world that never stops pressing down. Heavy, haunting, and deeply human, it’s the kind of track that lingers long after it ends.
“Suffocating Swan” is available now on all major streaming platforms
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Listen to Melting Phase and other similar artists on our Spotify Playlist ‘New Music Spotlight - Electronic’
