Listening to Zov.yay’s new single, “No Watches,” is like catching yourself forgetting what day of the week it is, and then deciding you quite like it. There’s a distinct feeling of unshouldering here, a shedding of temporal anxiety. Zov.yay’s flow is less a performance and more a conversation you’ve walked into, a comfortable, self-assured account of having arrived somewhere important without having watched the clock to get there.
The laid-back groove makes me think, strangely, of the deliberate work of a Japanese potter. Each rotation of the wheel is measured and confident, the artist’s hands knowing the form before it fully appears. That’s the energy here. Lines about a “detour” and developing a “mid range” before the “change up” are the verbal equivalent of a master craftsman reflecting on the thousands of imperfect pots that led to this one perfect vase. This isn’t the sound of braggadocio; it is the calm hum of earned mastery. A “maestro” who conducts the moment.
He declares his new sense of time is found “in the glass with some ice”—a perfect, crystalline detail. It’s in the condensation, the slow melt, the clink. He’s located eternity in a mundane, beautiful instance. The track functions as an invitation to this headspace, a space where your past isn’t a source of regret but the well-worn handle of the tool you’re now using with stunning precision. It is an ode to being present, built by someone who clearly took a long, winding road to get there.
The whole thing floats with an easy gravity, a declaration that one is “forever up.” But it leaves you with a thought: if you stop racing against the clock, do you stop moving, or do you finally start living in step with your own true rhythm?
