Listening to Jean-Philippe Ruelle’s new single, “Switeesoul,” is a peculiar kind of eavesdropping. You’re not hearing a sunrise, exactly, but the slow, internal thought process of one coming into being. The track’s layered electronic pianos don’t crash into your morning; they seep under the door, a cool wash of ambient sound that feels both deliberate and entirely accidental. It’s music that seems to have forgotten you’re in the room.
For a moment, it made me think of the patient, chemical bloom of an image appearing in a darkroom tray. There’s a similar feeling of quiet, gradual revelation here. Ruelle’s composition hinges on the idea that even in repetition, there are beautiful moments worth paying attention to. The melodic loops are simple, almost cyclical, but the texture around them subtly changes with each pass, like watching the same patch of sky from your window every dawn and noticing a new shade of purple you missed the day before.
It’s an oddly productive piece of music for something so tranquil. It creates a serene, almost detached space that invites the mind to get on with its own work, whether that’s dreaming up a new story or just figuring out what to have for lunch. The name itself, “Switeesoul,” feels like a misheard word from a dream—familiar, yet not quite right, adding to its ethereal quality.
It’s a quiet reassurance, a reminder that the world will indeed turn again, offering a slightly different blend of colors than it did yesterday. It asks nothing of you, which in turn makes you wonder: what beautiful, cyclical thing have I been forgetting to notice?
