Clara Hill x Crackazat – I Want You to Know (My Heart Beats Slow)

Berlin and Bristol collide in a dream collaboration between renowned German singer, songwriter and musician Clara Hill and much admired British producer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Ben Jacobs, better known as Crackazat.

Theirs is very much a partnership steeped in mutual respect and collective fandom. Clara first discovered Crackazat’s work via Instagram on her birthday in 2022, and for her the artistic attraction was instant.

“I was immediately drawn to his music, but also to the way he connected it visually with nature through his reels. My first thought was: I’d love to work with him one day, our musical worlds could fit together beautifully.”

Ben first discovered Clara some twenty years earlier, on hearing her timeless featured vocal on the Jazzanova classic, No Use.

“I was still a good eight years away from starting my own career in music, but as a musician and producer in training, I became an instant fan of her smooth, rich, and layered approach to vocals and harmony in electronic and jazz music.”

The mutual appreciation between the two never let up, with Ben’s fresh productions striking a chord with Clara and the pair forging a deep sonic connection:

“I kept following his work, and when his Evergreen album came out, I was completely blown away. It reminded me of a musical space I had loved deeply in the late ’90s and early 2000s, a sound that also influenced my own productions back then. I was especially impressed by the elegance of his compositions, the high level of musical craftsmanship, and the wonderfully human, slightly unfinished quality in his voice.”

Their respective timelines finally converged in 2023 with the confluence being a trip to South Africa to take part in some music workshops, during which Clara provided vocals for Ben as part of one of his live sets. Despite their powerful musical kinship, personal projects were still a priority for them both at the time, but a promise to revisit a possible partnership was made, and was finally realised late last year.

With some enthusiastic support from Clara, Ben had been chosen to contribute to the No Use remix edition, and at the same time, Clara was keen to start a new project that would reconnect with the sophisticated, soulful world of her early releases, albeit very much through a contemporary lens. At last, the scene was perfectly set for Crackazat and Clara to get in the studio together and work on some new music.

“Ben sent me two early drafts that I immediately connected with. One of them was based on a musical idea I had originally heard in one of his Instagram reels and had never forgotten. The inspiration was so strong that what was initially planned as two songs quickly became three. That’s when the idea for the Harmony EP was born.”

The pair have a truly symbiotic way of working, one which is reflective of the EP’s title, with Ben starting the process by creating sketches and Clara using them to inspire lyrics, melodies and vocal arrangements. After some long distance back and forth, Ben brings everything together in the final production, refining details and giving each track its sonic identity.

And despite Harmony being the connecting force between all three songs, each piece very much reflects a different aspect of emotional growth and self-acceptance.

Following the release of the uplifting first single Better, Clara Hill and Crackazat now unveil I Want You To Know (My Heart Beats Slow), the second single from their forthcoming Harmony EP.

While Better explored self-doubt, self-reflection and the courage to move beyond our own mental barriers, I Want You To Know (My Heart Beats Slow) turns its attention towards love, maturity and the quiet strength of lasting emotional connection. As the second chapter in the Harmony story, the song reveals another facet of the emotional honesty and personal growth that runs throughout the EP.

Clara explains in more detail:

“My idea of the song was to explore the sentence of ‘I love you because of him’ through a long-term relationship. It’s a poetic and emotional confession, an inner and outer monologue from someone who loved someone else in the past, but now loves another person in the present because of past love. Not with overwhelming passion or burning intensity or ‘fire’, but with something quieter: consistency, gratitude, trust, and a love that continues to grow over time.

It’s about discovering that some of the deepest forms of love are not the loudest ones. In many ways, the song is a gentle, late confession, a feeling that has been there for years, only now finding its way into the light….a late realization that some of the deepest forms of love grow slowly over time. The phrase ‘my heart beats slow’ became a symbol of that gentle, lasting connection.”

Sonically, I Want You To Know (My Heart Beats Slow) reflects a shared indulgence in the form of the duo’s love for deep house music. Its sturdy 4/4 beat allows space for light keys and Benson-style guitar licks to flourish alongside Clara’s unmistakable, yearning vocals.

Clara and Ben have created a project that’s centered around artistic trust, and the Harmony EP is surely only the start of the story….

Listen to Clara Hill & Crackazat – I Want You to Know (My Heart Beats Slow) here:

https://sonarkollektiv.lnk.to/IWantYoutoKnowMyHeartBeatsSlow