If you’ve ever found yourself staring into a coffee cup while the morning sun slices across a quiet kitchen table, Besides just put that feeling into sound.
The Hong Kong-rooted indie outfit return with ‘Breakfast’, a delicately layered dreamscape that feels like a slow-motion exhale. Built around a tapestry of gauzy guitars, softened synth textures, and gently meandering rhythms, this is the kind of track that earns your attention by evoking a familiar stillness that’s somehow both nostalgic and forward-looking.
Led by David McGinty, Besides continue to embrace a less-is-more approach that prioritises feeling over flash. There’s a purity to the way ‘Breakfast’ unfolds, never rushed, never forced- just a quiet unravelling of mood and thought. Vocals drift in like morning light through sheer curtains, unobtrusive yet emotionally grounding, and the production carries that charming analogue warmth that feels like it was captured straight to tape on a hazy Sunday afternoon.
The track finds strength in its simplicity, echoing the influence of lo-fi legends like Pavement and the ambient melancholy of Amnesiac-era Radiohead, but carved out with its own sense of place and pace. There’s a tenderness here, not in grand declarations, but in subtle details- the gentle reverb trails, the brushed percussion, the lyrical fragments that feel overheard rather than proclaimed.
What really sets ‘Breakfast’ apart is how Besides manage to weave a narrative without telling a story in the traditional sense. Instead, they build an emotional world, one where memory and present moment blur. You’re not being told what to feel, you’re being invited to feel with them.
If ‘The Empty Air’ was a cosmic meditation, ‘Breakfast’ is earthbound and personal; an ode to beginnings, both literal and emotional. With this release, Besides continue to solidify their position as masters of evocative understatement. It’s lo-fi with a soul, indie with a heartbeat, and exactly the kind of introspective escape the genre needs right now.
Pour yourself a cup and press play.
