Ivan Dorn has unearthed a powerful new R&B-tinged synth-funk single, ‘Love Could Be’. You can listen to it on DJ-Follower below.

The Kyiv-based pop polymath’s astounding vocal – up there with the great Anderson .Paak’s most soulful side – beautifully captures a sense of lost love.

And we’re spoiled as this eloquent, evocative lyricism is pinned to a timeless topline melody. Dorn the DJ star and frontman’s career-best? Quite possibly. Even when we’re taking into account the quality of his three studio albums, which have made him one of the biggest artists in Ukraine, and hugely popular in many neighbouring countries, new single ‘Love Could Be’ stands out as a great song in an immense body of work. It’s like a freak creative moment which can’t be dialled in.

Of how ‘Love Could Be’ came together, a press release states that it’s a paraphrase of Dorn’s early career Russian language cut (‘Northern Lights’, 2011), which you can hear.

But this iteration – with its soulfully-blown flugelhorn, analog synths older than Dorn himself, and funky slew of drum machines – benefits from a more deftly constructed wall of sound than ‘Northern Lights’.

‘Love Could Be’ is streaming now below

Helping achieve this was mastering engineer Mark Christensen. The studio legend, who’s completed tracks by the likes of 50 Cent, Raekwon, The Killers and Trey Songz, does brilliantly to fluff out these details and helps us listeners inhabit the soundscape.

Prolific production credits are then matched by an impressive early presence on Spotify. We can glean from Dorn’s socials that in the short few days that ‘Love Could Be’ has been released (it was dropped on 19 July), it’s landed on the first-ever New Music Friday Ukraine, generating thousands of streams and setting the precedent for more success to come.

As for the artist’s next steps, we’ll have to wait and see. But, we suspect even more new material soon. He has an air of an artist on the rise, busily releasing music throughout 2020, despite his touring wings being clipped by Covid-19. It’s been no meagre offering, either: the impressive EP Numbers – a collaborative effort with Seven Davis Jr. – saw support come from the likes of Clash, Under The Radar, and Louder Than War, as well as huge support from fans. And that’s before we remember ‘Chiki’, a leftfield electronic banger; and a CGI video for OTD album cut ‘Wasted’. All well worth checking out. Ivan Dorn is star quality through and through.

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Ivan Dorn is performing live later this year. Ticket information can be found here
12 November – Vilnius, Loftas
13 November – Riga, Palladium