An Explosive Masterpiece // Composer Reacts to Anna von Hausswolff - Struggle With the Beast

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:02]Hello and welcome back to another episode of Critical Reactions with your host Brian. We're going to continue on with this week's theme, exploring unusual genre combos today, looking at a track from Anna von Hoswolf. We're going to look at the song Struggle with the Beast. The only context I've been given is that through the combination of the genres present, it sort of makes its own genre.

[00:00:30]Looking forward to how all of this comes together. Let's dive in. See what Anna is bringing to the table today.

[00:01:03]Uh, I think we're in like a nine 9 98 maybe.

[00:01:12]Oh, no. Just four four. Okay.

[00:01:28]It's just massive, dude. This feels humongous.

[00:01:56]large upright bells. This Heat. Heat.

[00:02:59]Heat. Heat.

[00:03:22]The sustain notes in the backgrounds.

[00:03:50]Really interesting register shifting in the sax part there.

[00:03:56]This thing's just so big.

[00:04:10]I call the hospital this morning.

[00:04:20]I was getting the feeling of losing my mind.

[00:04:37]>> Gorgeous harmonies.

[00:04:57]dipping down into that diminish. Yeah.

[00:05:04]I'm scaring my sister.

[00:05:13]the general control and phrasing and pacing of all of this.

[00:05:24]>> It's interesting how often I'm left on the edge full anxiety about what's to come despite the song just being so like fun and groovy.

[00:05:47]These synths, I think, remind me of Massive Attack.

[00:05:55]It's the menacing size of them. It's the compression and distortion.

[00:06:04]My father said it's more to this than I love people.

[00:06:20]I tell you what, I'm playing dead.

[00:06:27]I'm in my head.

[00:06:54]to the story.

[00:07:00]those really large drums building up into nothing. We didn't get that downbeat accent on beat one. It's just kind of empty.

[00:07:09]>> There's still sound and the vocals are present, but layers removed.

[00:07:24]to the angels.

[00:07:38]Heat up here.

[00:07:57]The size of this feels emotionally different.

[00:08:04]There's reverence here where once there was fear Bringing the intro motif back. Okay.

[00:08:43]Heat.

[00:09:06]Heat.

[00:09:20]Not where I was expecting that to lend uh land. I was kind of expecting all of that tension to eventually give way for release in a more traditional sense.

[00:09:35]there uh there really wasn't a lot of harmonically unstable aspects to this track. The use of dissonance to create tension was rather limited. Um we did use tension as emotional movement uh to create darkness, but not that really tense anxiety like we felt in those final chords. And I really thought that holding on to that last one, we were going to burst into pure consonants, something uh reassuring, reaffirming uh strength of sorts.

[00:10:11]And we did land on resolution, but without the layers. We didn't explode into this massive final note. everything just kind of fades out and we have this final saxophone note.

[00:10:26]Uh that wraps the the track up.

[00:10:31]So we do have harmonic resolution, but not I would say layered resolution.

[00:10:38]There just isn't this feeling of release after that tension. It almost feels uh what's the word? Anticlimatic.

[00:10:49]Anticlimactic. Yeah, there's a C in there. Um, with all of this energy building towards nothing, we never really get that rupture at the end.

[00:11:08]And this isn't the first time the track did this. I pointed out earlier that we had this really big drum fill that went into nothing. instead of a really big first beat of the next bar, a lot of the layers dip out and we're left with some sound and the vocals in the center and it was this buildup into a reduction. Uh so the sort of um anticlimactic idea happens frequently in this track, but there is just as many sections that build into something big too where you get that catharsis from the explosion.

[00:11:46]And so the song just kind of has you wondering what's around the corner. Am I going to find release from this tension or not?

[00:11:57]can never really anticipate what it's doing.

[00:12:03]Very interesting track though as far as unusual genre combos go. Yeah, dude.

[00:12:09]This is uh how do you classify it? I think really what instruments are in play? I'd love to see this live because there's trumpets, there's saxophones, there's timony and um orchestral drums.

[00:12:29]I feel I feel like there's a really big bass drum in here, but I'm not sure about everything else.

[00:12:39]Maybe there's tubas, trombones, baritones, but maybe they're synthesized.

[00:12:48]There's a lot of really big blasty sounds on this track and I don't know if they're changed in any way.

[00:12:59]Low-end brass, they can get very gnarly.

[00:13:05]If you start blasting, putting a lot of air pressure through the horn, you can get some pretty gnarly distortion naturally out of the instrument. And even in uh an orchestral setting, you would call this blasting. Uh sometimes the conductor doesn't want you blasting.

[00:13:23]It says, you know, pull it back a little bit. Loud but not blasting. But other times, you want to get this distortion, this compression at the uh on your tone.

[00:13:31]You want to put that extra air through it. Um, and I've listened to some tubas, some susopones, just get some gnarly sounds out that might be kind of similar to what we heard on the outskirts of this track surrounding us. These massive uh, just low-end tones, but they also could be synthesized.

[00:13:58]And I think at the end of the day, the instrumentation does matter a little bit, but I think that the end result is what's more important. This is a track that from the very getgo is inspired by technical is inspired by techno or electronic music. Technical.

[00:14:25]There is heavy distortion, modulation, modifications, sonic uh manipulation going on with these instruments. The saxs at the very beginning, I actually thought, and I still do kind of think that it was digitally edited, chopped up to have a small snippet repeated over and over and over and over. After I don't know what, like a couple seconds of this, it went into the intro riff.

[00:14:53]the that motif, that ostanado that showed up throughout the track and wrapped the song up on the sax itself.

[00:15:00]And I I began to wonder, could this have been done by hand? If you handed a a you know, a really good saxophone player a saxophone and and this music, could they be able to replicate that sort of a glitchy, jagged performance?

[00:15:21]I think so.

[00:15:23]And this is where again, I mean, if you're coming at this from an academic area of trying to understand how to create something like this, yes, the process, the instruments, how the instruments end up sounding the way they do, this is all really important. If this is all done with uh, you know, a keyboard and a drum pad, that's going to be very different than if this has to be composed for a full orchestra.

[00:15:48]But I think for the sake of talking about it within my scope, it really doesn't matter if these instruments are real or not, the end result is that it feels orchestral in a lot of ways. In fact, many of the tambers I can hear are either, yes, the instruments or emulated instruments of an orchestra, but the composition doesn't necessarily always veer in a more classical direction. And there there is that electronic inspiration in here. A lot of these instruments feel like they are texturebased. When I listen to what the trumpets are doing in the back, in fact, I think the first time that I talked about the trumpets doing these uh sustained notes in the background, I even called them synths.

[00:16:37]For all intents and purposes, I find it really difficult to distinguish what these instruments are. They're being played unusually. their sound is being modified maybe in the creation process, maybe in post-prouction to not necessarily sound like them.

[00:16:55]There is a lot going on here that is designed to create this liinal space between physical instrumentation and digital instrumentation of where I am constantly asking myself how much of this was literally or physically performed and how much of it was digitally created.

[00:17:17]And I I think that's maybe not the intentional point of it, but it is a key element of this track. And I I think that's why it really comes to a point where it both matters and doesn't.

[00:17:34]It is this merger of electronic sonic principles with classical composition and general sound. And I find that merger to be really interesting, especially as so much of this track is based around, as I just mentioned, texture.

[00:17:53]Aside from the opening saxophone lick, are there really many melodies in here?

[00:17:58]You can hum back to me.

[00:18:04]Maybe a couple. It's not devoid of melody, but it also isn't the first thing I think of. This track to me is size.

[00:18:14]Everything in here is humongous. Every instrument sounds massive.

[00:18:21]Part of this is the sheer volume of everything, but another is the blasting.

[00:18:27]It's the texture. It's the compression on these large instruments, too.

[00:18:34]But there's also so many instruments that are primarily focused on sounds. Not necessarily musical ostanados. Not anything technically melodic, but stuff that's just functional. Little shrieks or slides or uh you know, orchestral stabs. just things that add to the atmosphere without being melodically or harmonically driven. Sometimes not even too focused on rhythmically driven either. In the case of those uh trumpets in the background during what I would probably call a a chorus of sorts, it is a returned to section of this track. Uh and I think there are vocals there, but honestly, I I don't remember.

[00:19:23]I'll be completely honest, aside from the sections where the layers cut out and the vocals come in, I kind of don't remember a lot of the places with vocals because they're just, it's not that they were invisible to me. The instrumentation just swallows it up and grabs my attention and I really wasn't ever listening to the vocals unless they were directly in the spotlight.

[00:19:46]Definitely something to pay attention to more on a second listen is to uh you know just give the vocals a bit more of my attention given that the instrumentation stole it from the vocals on this first listen.

[00:20:00]But the trumpets in the background, I mean, they're just holding out notes.

[00:20:04]You get two bars of it. uh maybe at the end of the second bar we'll have two beats of a transition note into the next note or the next chord, but it's just holding these notes out. The rhythmic information isn't really strong in these cases either. So, if it's not rhythmically or melodically or harmonically doing anything, it's just kind of texture. It's noise to fill space, to set the mood, to set the atmosphere.

[00:20:31]Sometimes like at the end we do see something harmonic and that we have those dissonant chords being played but the purpose isn't to create uh well I mean I guess technically it is you're using the harmonic information to create tension but the idea is for that to create this anxiety this tension this this cringing this you know feels like the the world is crushing in around you they are using harmony to do that but it's a texture at that point as far as I'm concerned. And yeah, it gets a little blurry, sure, 100%. Um, but I do really feel like this is interesting because it it's classical music through the lens of modern electronic.

[00:21:17]There is a rep there's a repeated hook in here. That saxophone part is infectious.

[00:21:23]Um, and it is, you know, we hear it so often. And it is probably when I asked, you know, is there anything that you could hum back to me? That's probably going to be the one that most people would immediately jump to.

[00:21:36]And that's pretty well uh situated within electronic music. Though classical music, repeated ostanado are certainly a thing in there, too.

[00:21:45]But aside from that, everything just feels like it's atmosphere building very much in like a a post metal kind of idea or post rock. Maybe even when we add an instrument, the question isn't how can this embellish the melody?

[00:22:02]How can this push forward uh the story or the narrative? The the question becomes how can we create a feeling with this? or maybe from another perspective, what feeling should I add to where we are right now? And what instrument would do best to achieve that?

[00:22:20]And I think that's where we get a lot of the layers in this track. Again, it's texture. It's manipulation of the atmosphere.

[00:22:32]So, what is the atmosphere of this track?

[00:22:36]The story that I get out of this is well kind of simple. As maximalist as this song can be, it's a very direct story to me at least.

[00:22:52]This song fluctuates rapidly between overwhelming power and weight and control within a small space.

[00:23:10]We have these massive sounds that absolutely crush the listener down, but those are juxtaposed with sections that are very minimal. maybe just a couple of instruments pushed out to the side, harmonically stable, and sometimes a lead instrument, usually the saxophone, but also once we hit the 3 or 4 minute mark, the vocals became a key element that showed up in these sections, too.

[00:23:35]Now, the largest tended for me to feel overwhelming, overbearing, crushing. A lot of this comes through with the harmonic side as well, usually bringing in darker sounds. I talked about that diminished turn that we heard in the chorus that absolutely sent me. That was such a wild like it makes sense in retrospective, but I was just not expecting it at that moment.

[00:23:59]But darkness, uh, tension, overwhelming, uh, just anxiety. Anxiety and fear is what I get through a lot of this track.

[00:24:09]and then it just kind of dissipates and we're left with a calm emptiness that will eventually grow back into this darkness and anxiety again. Uh this heavy weight. But what I found really interesting is I the last time that we did this uh was that the third or fourth time into this heavy section I was talking about the chords underneath being wildly different. Some sort of reverence or awe here.

[00:24:38]It brought me back to the title of this track, Struggle with the Beast.

[00:24:43]And I wonder if this isn't about overcoming a beast, but not not necessarily in a destructive way, but coming to terms with an animal.

[00:25:00]Not necessarily destroying it in a fight for your life, but understanding the beauty of it and living alongside it.

[00:25:08]Somehow, despite not having language to really talk to this beast with, you still come to an understanding between it and yourself and you can live harmoniously. And at that point, it is no longer something to fear. It is no longer the fight or flight instinct. It is not, you know, a battle of life and death.

[00:25:29]You can now see the beauty and majesty of this beast as terrifying as it was a moment ago.

[00:25:37]And the song does a great job of pacing all of this too. The highs and the lows between volume, between layering, between emotional weight.

[00:25:48]It is masterfully crafted.

[00:25:54]Everything in here is really well done.

[00:25:58]What I find interesting, and I I don't really know where to put this timestamp wise, so I'm just going to slot it in right here. Uh I I don't really find this to be too genre meldding the further I get away from it.

[00:26:17]I still find much of this to be informed by electronic music, but the song has now been over for 15ish minutes now, 20-ish minutes maybe. And it just feels like modern classical informed by electronic music. Sure. But I I feel like a lot of the textures are starting to leave my memory and I'm left with the feeling of it, an emotional residue of the song more so than the intense contrast I felt while listening to it. I find that to be really interesting.

[00:27:08]It's not to say that the song has changed, just my my perspective on it.

[00:27:13]Definitely think I need another run on this. But I don't think it's going to be Alone.

[00:27:19]I think I'm going to have to listen to this album. It comes from same title, Struggle with the Beast.

[00:27:26]Came out October of last year. Looks like there's only four tracks on it with this one being the longest by far.

[00:27:36]might have to look a little more into it and see if it is just an EP or if maybe this was a single with a couple other tracks and there was a larger LP with this also on it. Uh regardless, I I'm interested. This is very cool stuff and I think more importantly incredibly powerful and that's always going to grab my attention. Let me hit some lyrics on this, then we'll wrap this one up.

[00:28:07]There's 12 whole lines here. Only 10 unique lines versus three and four share two lines. Uh and and the rhyme scheme is really interesting because there isn't one, but it it does rhyme at times.

[00:28:25]It feels less intentional.

[00:28:31]I think when when I look back on tracks where there's no rhyming at all, I I've always kind of assumed that was just, you know, a stream of consciousness. The words came straight from the head onto the paper. Maybe some words were changed around as drafts were done on it, but generally speaking, like this is just what I wanted to say, so I said it. But when I I read this, this I think feels completely unintentional.

[00:29:02]Whereas songs with no or lyrics with no rhyming at all now feels very intentional, as if you purposefully went out of your way to ensure that nothing rhymes, at least at the end of lines.

[00:29:21]Here, the rhyming is just kind of random.

[00:29:26]Verse two, we have mom and calm and then hiding and abiding.

[00:29:32]Verse three has lines one, three, and four all rhyming with said, dead, and head, but not line two. And then four, and one barely have any rhyming at all. And only one only has a really soft rhyme with mourning and feeling, both having an ing, but not really sharing the rest of the word. uh having any sort of um syllabobic similarity.

[00:30:03]The story itself though isn't as vague to me, at least not as much as why it rhymes, when it rhymes, and in what capacity it rhymes. That just seems totally chaotic to me. It says, "I called the hospital this morning. I was getting a feeling of losing my mind. of losing control.

[00:30:26]Verse two says, "I'm scaring my sister and my mom. My eyes aren't human, but they're calm. The sun is in hiding. No rules. I'm abiding."

[00:30:38]So, we have somebody who feels like they are losing control of themsel and the people around them can see that they are changing.

[00:30:47]While it does say that their eyes are described as not human, creating a physical description, I don't think this necessarily has to be the read on it, it could simply be that uh the narrator's sister and mom are just there's something off when they look at our narrator.

[00:31:06]I think translating that into my eyes becoming inhuman is just a way to create something physical and mal not malleable uh understandable about this transformation. Whereas what's actually being picked up is a bit more transient.

[00:31:25]But it says that the sun isn't hiding.

[00:31:27]So we don't have brightness. There's just darkness here. Typically uh a literal literary metaphor for uh evil.

[00:31:37]danger.

[00:31:39]And it says, "No rules. I'm abiding."

[00:31:42]Which leans into this danger, too.

[00:31:45]They're not playing by any rules.

[00:31:47]They're not following any laws. Anything could happen.

[00:31:52]This lines up really well with them losing control of their body and of their mind. They've become unpredictable.

[00:32:02]Now, verse three and four both share the first two lines. It's more to the story than my father said. It's more to this life than the life I've had.

[00:32:13]This is really interesting because generally I think the phrase would be there is more to the story, not it is more to the story. And I I I keep coming back to this. Why it?

[00:32:29]First of all, it is a pronoun. It refers to something else. Where? What? What else would we be referring to? And I don't know.

[00:32:43]It could be the feeling of losing control.

[00:32:47]It could be the narrator themsself now referring to themsel in third person.

[00:32:52]It could be this transformation. It could well, I guess that's about it.

[00:32:58]Or it could be something undescribed.

[00:33:02]For clarity's sake, you would need to name a pron or name a noun before you use the pronoun in your writing. But if you're trying to be vague, if you're trying to allude to something, you don't need to. I don't know what the it is, though.

[00:33:20]But it is more to the story than my father said. It's more to this life than the life I've had.

[00:33:29]What's really interesting here is that you really could have said life I've led and stuck with the rhyme and it almost feels that you know almost purposeful to avoid that but I think led also talks about control had is something given to you. It's a very specific use of this word here.

[00:33:54]I don't know these two lines confound me. If anyone has insight, I'm all ears on it.

[00:34:01]Verse three ends, "People are dying while I'm playing dead and I'm in the head." Verse four says, "An angel is crying and she can't get out. Give life to the angel."

[00:34:14]I think the idea about people are dying while I'm playing dead is about comparing one's person one person's circumstance to some of the worst in the world.

[00:34:25]Um, I don't know to what end. It could possibly be a a way of looking down on oneself. Why am I worrying about my small issues when, you know, people are going hungry in the world? That kind of false equivalency and then saying, you know, well, obviously it's because I have mental issues, as she puts it.

[00:34:49]I'm up in the head. So I think that this is some insightful element into our narrator and how they view themsel. But then verse four talks about giving life to an angel that can't get out and is crying. And this almost feels like whatever darkness is inside of us, uh, kind of going back to this metaphorical idea of of change of of having your body language be different and people picking up on it.

[00:35:23]feeling having a a low self-esteem and not thinking that your problems are worthwhile and trying to let the angel out, the good part of yourself that is chained up within to let that out. I find this interesting though because it's called struggle with the beast and maybe in this case the beast is mental illness. Maybe it's a type of uh depression maybe.

[00:35:57]But my interpretation of the music was to find beauty with what we had already established. The final section of this track is very much like any of the others, but harmonically shifting towards this beauty, this reverence, this larger than life awe.

[00:36:19]And that reverence definitely works from a kind of religious angelic perspective.

[00:36:26]But the way I see this is if you have darkness on the outside, you have light on the inside. You've got to let that back out. You got to free that. Which doesn't sound like coming to terms with the beast as much as I got out of the musical story. This feels like defeating it by letting the good out. having reverence for half while trying to overcome another.

[00:36:52]Not quite what I got from the music, but certainly what the lyrics are going for.

[00:37:01]But maybe that's also why it ends unceremoniously. Rather than a big triumphant final chord, we just get the sachs.

[00:37:11]We've quieted things down. The beast is no longer as rabid. The fight or flight is gone, but things haven't been fixed or corrected yet.

[00:37:29]These are just my thoughts though on Anavon Hoswolf's struggle with the beast. What did you think of this track?

[00:37:36]Is there anything that stood out to you?

[00:37:37]Anything that you would like to add on to what I said or correct me on? Do you have your own take, perspective, or opinion on this track? Let me know. Put all of that and anything else you'd like to add into the comment section below.

[00:37:49]Above that in the description box is a link to Linkree. It takes you here, you can find links to my music, ways to support the channel, a link to the Discord server, and so much more. Above that, if you could like, subscribe, and ring the bell. I greatly appreciate all three of those. That wraps it up for today. I'll be back tomorrow though, 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 9:00 p.m. UTC. As usual, until next time, remember to be critical, not cynical, of the music you listen to. And have a fantastic morning, afternoon, or evening, whenever you choose to watch my videos.

[00:38:45]Hey, hey, hey.