River of Darkness

"River of Darkness"
Song by The Midnight featuring Timecop1983
from the album Nocturnal
Released	October 13, 2017 (2017-10-13)
Length	6:05
Label	The Midnight Music
Songwriter(s)	Tim McEwan Tyler Lyle Jordy Leenaerts
Producer(s)	Tim McEwan
Nocturnal track listing
Nocturnal "Shadows" "Crystalline" "Collateral" "River of Darkness" "Nocturnal" "Light Years" "Tokyo Night Train"

River of Darkness is a song by The Midnight featuring Timecop1983. It is the fourth track from their album Nocturnal.

The song was written by band members Tim McEwan and Tyler Lyle alongside Jordy Leenaerts and produced by McEwan. The saxophone on River of Darkness was performed by Thomas Edinger and the lead guitar was done by Pelle Hillström. It has a running time of six minutes and five seconds and is in the key of E-flat minor.

River of Darkness was one of the four songs whose stems were made available to download during the first The Midnight Remix Radio competition.

McEwan revealed the source of the intro voice at live show Q&A session in 2022:

“I— maybe I should reveal— I’ve had so many questions through the years, whether on social media, people asking— asking us for ‘Sunset’ and the ‘River of Darkness’, and I…. I kinda revealed the ‘Sunset’ one the other day, that it wasn’t from a movie, and I kept a tight lip, but maybe now I should reveal that I actually… it’s a script that I wrote out, and actually, I was… the studio I was renting a room at in Hollywood back then, in 2017… there was one of the— one of the owners, one of the producer guys that ran the studios, he was named Eric, and, I was like, ‘Eric, can you— do you wanna help me out? Come in here?’, and he read out my script. I was like, ‘imagine you’re in a smoke— you’re in a smokey bar, and it’s a scene from kind of an ‘80s noir movie, and it’s very masculine and kinda like, very sexy, low-spoken voice… keep it husky and sexy.’ And he was like, [imitating husky voice] ‘Hey man… I know you miss her, man…’, and I was like ‘That’s exactly right.”

“And I put tons of compression on it, to— and put some background, kinda like, noise to make it feel like it was… you know how movie clips are so compressed, you hear all the background noises and all the mouth noises, and it almost becomes like ASMR because it’s so, like, compressed? And I did that, and I was like— I was pretty chuffed with myself.”

Lyrics

Glowing windows in the buildings from the elevated train
I see a thousand different stories pass
And faces without names

I forget why I came here
And forget why I stay
And wonder if they'd notice
If I slipped away

What if I kept going
What if I don't get off tonight
What if I ride this to the edges
Through the darkness to the light

Could I find you there?
Could I find you there?
If I slipped away?

What if there's no answer
We’re all just hearts that have to fight
Through the dangers of the rapids
Through the darkness to the light

Could I find you there?
Could I find you there?
If I slipped away?

Lyrics source

Official versions

River of Darkness

from Nocturnal

River of Darkness (instrumental)

from Nocturnal (The Instrumentals)

References

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