October 30, 2023
Slade Rand
Silver Screen Fantasy continues its evolution today with an exploratory new track and music video, launching the Denver-based musician into a more collaborative era.
Chris Voss, the songwriter and engineer behind Silver Screen Fantasy, invites Will Carman to the drum kit for the project’s latest journey. “Orbit” is the duo’s first tune together, ebbing and flowing beyond a core melody, and changing rhythms on a dime to pull the listener closer.
“Orbit” premieres Monday evening on YouTube (4:30 p.m. MT), and the track is available today on streaming platforms or via the artist here.
The musicians brought together choreographer Hannah Stoltenberg and Salt Lick Records to produce a video embodying the song’s pulsing and accelerating feel. In an empty warehouse, dancers spin away from and lurch back toward one another under a drone camera.
Voss said he found a more organic style with “Orbit” thanks to the new collaboration with Carman, who plays with Ghost Tapes locally. Voss said he’s gotten to know Carman and other local musicians gigging around town or through his day job as sound engineer at Salt Lick, but this is the first Silver Screen Fantasy track recorded with other musicians.
“This is one that I let sit in my head for a long time and then become more refined as we played it over and over,” Voss told After Midnight this week.
The songwriting on “Orbit” is personal. Voss sings about stumbling into someone’s life, creating new patterns and maybe falling in love. The music picks up intensity around his atmospheric vocals before pausing and receding back to its mellow pace.
“The verses are meant to feel kind of wary, that scary feeling when you’re trying to make a relationship work,” Voss said. “And then the chorus brings the joy out and that relief.”
“Have we not learned from cycles past?,” Voss asks during a verse.
Since starting to play guitar at the age of six or seven, it’s been hard for Voss to stop creating music.
“It’s an innate urge,” Voss said. “It’s a form of expression and I think it’s just the need to have somewhere to reflect on life and circumstances in the world we live in and face everyday.”
He’s been making music as Silver Screen Fantasy since moving to Denver from Colorado Springs five years ago. Voss said starting as a solo artist he’d typically record music as soon as he wrote it – producing a full length album and two EPs. He said the collaborative, more drawn out new approach also helped him reach a softer side of his songwriting.
“Being a solo artist it’s one thing having all the time to create on your own, but it’s kind of difficult to try and bring that to life without help,” Voss said.
The Silver Screen Fantasy universe will grow even larger later this month with its first live performance as a group.
The expanded Silver Screen Fantasy takes the stage for the first time Nov. 30 at Lost Lake Lounge. Voss and Carman will perform together with a new bassist, venturing further from Silver Screen Fantasy’s roots as a solo project.
“Community is everything,” Voss said. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned while creating in Denver is how much talent there is in this community and how much people are willing to support you.”
Advance tickets for Silver Screen Fantasy’s Nov. 30 show supporting Yugs at Lost Lake Lounge are available here.
“I’m pretty excited to be able to show off the accumulation of over a decade of sitting on stuff and letting tons of demos evolve over time, leading to the style I have now,” Voss said.
After Midnight 
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