I keep a drawer of black candles and I refuse to be embarrassed about what I’ve whispered over them. Somewhere in this apartment there’s a tarot deck missing The Lovers because I tore that card in half over a man whose timing was fucked from the jump. Nobody left anybody. The timing did all the damage on its own. He ran on nights while my whole life ran on daylight, and the universe kept us on opposite ends of every clock we touched. The chemistry was real enough to make me superstitious about it. I used to check the moon out my window and wonder if he was under it too, which is embarrassing to admit and also the most honest shit I’ll say all week. So when Gabrielle Ornate showed up with a song about lovers the sky itself keeps apart, I lit a candle before I even pressed play. I knew what I was walking into.
‘Sun And Moon’ is old-school witch house for the girl who finally accepts that chemistry can be real as fuck and still have nowhere to go. Gabrielle turns it into a doomed little fable about two people who belong under the same sky yet keep getting pulled into separate nights, which is the cruelest shit about love. Nobody cheated or got boring so there is no clean villain to blame. They want each other but fate has other plans and the heartbreak keeps circling long after the candles burn down. Her sun-and-moon imagery gives the song its gothic pull – all shadowed rooms and star-crossed obsession – while the emotion stays painfully human. You can love somebody hard enough to feel them everywhere and still never get to keep them. Fucking rude, but there it is.
Orlando Avalon’s remix is the reason this heartbreak has a pulse. He takes Gabrielle’s doomed fable and drops it onto a dark dance floor and the bass walks straight into your hips uninvited. Dancing to a song about a man you never get to keep is its own kind of ritual and it works because grief burns off faster when the beat is this insistent. Put this on in a dark room full of strangers and see who ends up standing too damn close.
Advertisement
The spell opens quietly. “Silent burning / Crescent-destiny may never bloom / Astral yearning / Dripping echoes of a cherished tune born to commune.” That opening image is the most dangerous kind of want because nobody gets to see it and it never gets to finish. She’s aching for a man written into her stars and even the stars won’t commit. That second image is filthy in an elegant way, a melody made for one specific person sliding down slow, and the universe won’t let it do its one job. I’ve wanted somebody in that register before, where the want has its own pulse and no destination, and it made me feel a little feral.
Then she names the curse out loud. “Damned synergy / Decreed us be / Eternal star-crossed rogue memories.” Somebody upstairs wrote these two into each other’s orbit and then rigged the schedule so they’d never share a sky. That’s what memories of an almost do. They slip the leash and show up at 2am wearing his cologne. I know that visit. Every woman who’s had real chemistry with impossible timing knows that goddamn visit.
The image that wrecked me comes next. “In distant space / We alternate / Chained paralyzed angel.” One of them rises while the other one is already gone, forever, on a rotation neither of them chose. And that angel is gorgeous and brutal at once, wanting to move toward somebody and staying fixed in place by something bigger than you. Desire with nowhere to go turns the body into a haunted house. I’ve lived in that house. The rent is terrible.
The chorus is where she stops fighting it. “It’s true when they say / Forlorn fate must be ordained / While we’re wandering galaxies / I know we will always be.” She accepts the sentence and keeps the connection anyway. Fate handed her the ache so she claims the eternity that comes with it, and she leaves that final line hanging open with nothing after it, because the bond never needed an ending to be real. That kind of devotion is the sexiest thing on this record to me, loving somebody across a distance you cannot close and refusing to pretend otherwise.
Advertisement
The last verse is where she gets brave. “You’re unearthly / Fleeting visions kindled in a gleam / I am worthy / Of our unifying alchemy / To supersede.” He’s a vision flickering in and out of reach and she answers him with the flex that made me sit the fuck up, a woman telling the universe she deserves the alchemy it dangled in front of her. Then that last word does its dirty work. She’s declaring their chemistry strong enough to override the decree, and the lyric cuts off right there, mid-reach, the same way the whole affair does. She never finishes the thought because fate never let her.
Gabrielle Ornate writes modern rock for girls who keep a little darkness in their makeup bag. The London artist calls her sound “modern rock with ancient soul” and she earns every bit of the drama – threading mythology through synth-driven alt-pop with enough hook to keep the spell working after the first listen. Alongside producer Orlando Avalon she chases analogue textures and restless riffs – turning fate, feminine power, and the fucked-up corners of the subconscious into a world that feels like a moonlit forest with a killer sound system. She was making up melodies as a toddler and taught herself piano at eleven which feels right for a woman whose songs open hidden rooms after midnight. At eighteen she formed an all-female band with her best friend and her younger sister and sharpened her stage instincts in real time. Frank Baum’s Oz and Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland feed the fairytale side of her imagination. She pulls inspiration from Scottish electronic duo Boards of Canada then folds the guitar drama of British alternative-rock bands Wolf Alice and Radiohead into her own sound to make gothic pop for the woman who wants her mythology with a little fucking bite.
I bought a new tarot deck last month and The Lovers stays in it this time. The man on the opposite clock is still out there running his nights, and I’ve made peace with the idea that some chemistry you only ever get to feel. Gabrielle put language to a thing I’d only ever burned candles over and that deserves its own small ritual. So I lit one for her last night and slept better than I have in weeks.
