Guitarist Ian Bouras is Back with New Single/Video

Nature is an immense influencer in the art world, and in the new instrumental “The Struggle to Live” from Ian Bouras, it’s the subject of a multi-communicative sonic story that unfolds one strikingly beautiful chapter at a time over just a few minutes and change. Whether we’re listening to the track all on its own or watching the delicate music video made in support of its release, there’s no escaping its harmonious grasp, particularly as we enter the song’s latter half. It’s one of the more powerful performances born of experimentalism I’ve heard this year, and once you check it out, I think you’re going to understand my enthusiasm.  

The music video for “The Struggle to Live” is remarkably simple, dismissing the very notion of inauthentic buffering in favor of placing most of the emphasis on the execution behind each melody. We watch on as Bouras finds the individual parts and marry them with adjacent melodies in the mix, the entire track coming together bit by bit in real-time. There’s a creative bend to the imagery, but nothing is especially theatrical – after all, if we’re to put most of our focus on the music itself, over-the-top visual devices simply don’t belong here.  

I love the flow in this song, and from my perspective, it’s hard for me to imagine lyrics being present in the music because of the dynamic between the percussion and the string parts. Verses would have got in the way of a drive as incendiary as dry wood in a heatwave, and for Bouras to properly play to the intricate cues, there can’t be anything unnecessary or frilly added to the mix. Efficiency is the name of the game for this kind of artist, and if that wasn’t known before this release, everyone’s going to get the point now.  

There’s no arguing whether or not the most melodic parts are quite understated throughout “The Struggle to Live,” but I would note that the softer instrumental presence here undisputedly impacts how we’re to interpret the overall meaning of the song. Beside the somewhat anxious meanderings of the guitar, the backdrop seems to afford the bottom of the single a certain retrospective element that no bassline could ever replicate without the pressure we find in this arrangement.  

I’m not always as impressed with experimental or ambient projects as some of my contemporaries are, but if you ask me, what Ian Bouras can pull off in the music video for the single “The Struggle to Live” is something to be proud of. There’s been quite a bit of gold coming out of the international underground this winter, and despite the challenges set before the artists who dominate the underground, there’s no denying that “The Struggle to Live” is a beautiful encapsulation of this player’s talents that doesn’t require a thorough knowledge of his style to fully appreciate. It’s a slam dunk for Bouras, the experimental scene he’s taking over one track at a time, as well as listeners who like something a little more intellectual in general.  

Nicole Killian