Seven Lions has been touring a lot lately, and he recently concluded his Journey II tour, which had stops all around the States. His set has been filled with a bunch of exclusives: some solo IDs, a couple of collaborations, and a few unreleased Ophelia tracks from other artists.

However, there has been one track in specific that people have been raving about. That’s the intro tune in his set, which was suspected to have been a Crystal Skies collaboration from the outset. Friday saw the release of this tune, which previously was left unreleased for more than half a year. Interestingly titled Sojourn, this track includes melodic dubstep, as you might expect from the artists involved, but it also adds an infusion of psy-rhythms to fire things up.

A collaboration between a melodic bass icon and a melodic bass up-and-coming duo is sure to be innovative, for experience and a new outlook are blended together in the result. Seven Lions has previously invited Crystal Skies to Ophelia for a solo double A-side titled Never Change, and now he takes their (professional) relationship to the next level with a full-fledged collaboration.

Sojourn is perfect example of a ‘thematic’ song, in which the whole tune is centered around one single motif or chord progression. It’s a simple one, but one that’ll bring a smile to your face in no time. Four notes on a repeated vocal sample and only a couple more on the chord progression, but they’re enough to form the basis behind the whole song.

Starting with a touching piano intro, backed by the most magical of pads, Seven Lions and Crystal Skies introduce you to vocal sample and chord progression they’ll be building on over the next four minutes, while moving straight into a buildup. With a comparatively minimalist mixdown by their standards, you can hear prominently some of the more exciting and innovative elements of the buildup, including the dynamics and the variations in loudness/velocity of a lower end arpeggio – creating an extra rhythm in the louder notes, which is most noticeable around 10 seconds before the drop. This drop itself is classic melodic dubstep, which soaring, stacked supersaws playing the chord progression, with a few metallic fills interspersed in between. Moving into a purely dubstep second portion, it’s time for our artists to flex their sound design skills on Serum.

The second psytrance-influenced drop is quite interesting, as we’re seeing a huge trend towards the genre in recent times. Seven Lions has done psy before in tunes like After Dark (w/ Blastoyz and Fiora) and The Blood (w/ Kill The Noise). Which many might claim that it’s an over-saturated genre, we feel that it just takes the right person to hit the sweet spot – which you can see well here. Unlike your conventional psy, here they opt for a less punchy and more balanced kick, and the bass peaks at higher frequency than you would expect – changing the psy style from energetic to harmonic, as you can easily hear the distinct bass note changing in the mid lows.

Kudos to Seven Lions and Crystal Skies for doing this tune without any copy-paste drops or duplicated sounds; each part, whether it be a simple fill or a lead synth, is uniquely made for the tune. Apart from the intro and outro (which are presumably similar for a sense of symmetry and finality), there aren’t any sections which overtly copy their main features from others – something that is quite rare in the game these days.

If there was one aspect I had to criticize here, it would be that there could have been more focus on the melodically oriented first portion of the first drop, considering both dubstep and psy lean to the energetic side of spectrum. If you consider Seven Lions’ previously released recent tunes, most notably The Blood (with Kill The Noise), you’ll hear Jeff explore such a diverse collection of sounds from dubstep and psy that I wish there was more of here. While Sojourn sticks to more of a simplistic conventional arrangement, The Blood was an amalgamation of so many different sections that it takes a few listens to understand the flow of the song – simply because there was so much of innovation in that track.

It would be amiss to conclude before talking about the title and the cover art. Oftentimes, in a vocal tune, the title is rather obvious, and based off a phrase in the chorus. With instrumental tunes like this one, artists have the freedom to choose what they think their track represents, and I’m glad Seven Lions and Crystal Skies went for Sojourn as opposed to a generic word from the English language. Sojourn refers to a temporary stay somewhere, tying back to the theme of the Journey tour. The nostalgic chord progression and the despondent-sounding vocal sample fit the title of the track perfectly.

Meanwhile, the cover art for this tune is absolutely mystical. Raising the bar even higher when it comes to Ophelia artwork, this particular piece seems like a scene straight out of a fantasy story – we’re all thinking the same thing here. Amidst snow-capped peaks, frozen, ice-tipped monuments defining an imposing entrance to a castle that stands tall on the left. Continuing the innovate setting-themed artwork that Ophelia has since become renowned for, the art to Sojourn adds a hint of mystery and warmth to the track itself.