Nerve Leak's Sam Friedman Evokes James Blake, The Weeknd & FKA Twigs On Self-reflective Disconnected EP Follow-up, "Moon Pulls" (Soundcloud, self-released)

"Part of my goal in writing "Moon Pulls" was to simply just be more honest. I've always been cryptic in my writing; instead of saying what really happened, I would use a metaphor or some type of simile to get the point across. With this track, I wasn't afraid to talk about the intense feelings of lust, love, and confusion I was experiencing. I feel like "Moon Pulls" is a drama condensed into a four-minute, Pop-structured song because it has movements that represent certain moments in time for me and it builds to a climax of myself bluntly asking, "what did I do to deserve you?" When I perform the song live, I always find myself screaming that part—it's such a human experience, being both grateful to have someone, while simultaneously feeling afraid to lose them," Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and producer Sam Friedman (professionally known as Nerve Leak) wrote within a recent emailed statement exclusive to The Witzard. While penning and creating "Moon Pulls," Friedman says he drew inspiration from the likes of James Blake, The Weeknd, and FKA Twigs to produce what he fittingly describes as a "song led by Trap-inflected beats, soaring vocal samples, and lyrics evocative of dominant/submissive intimacy."


"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," Sam Friedman candidly revealed to Bullett Media, who premiered "Moon Pulls" earlier this month; further commending Friedman by saying, "it’s not an easy feat to pull of a song with both a sense of deeply felt humanity and otherworldly distance, but on "Moon Pulls" Nerve Leak walks the line adeptly." "Moon Pulls" serves as Nerve Leak's latest output following his FADER-premiered April single, "DR34M5" and its predecessor, Disconnected EP, which was accompanied by an e-booklet and interactive blog titled Snow / Sun / Words conceptualized by Sam Friedman along with "a collective of writers who interpreted his music with unique poetic works." It's currently unclear wherein "Moon Pulls" and 6-month-old "DR34M5" might eventually end up, but it appears as though they will likely end up packaged together on Nerve Leaks' forthcoming as-yet-untitled Disconnected EP follow-up, as they're both "written, engineered, produced, and mixed by Nerve Leak [and] mastered by Joe Lambert."