Slow Tide: an original downtempo / trip-hop song (4:55, 94 bpm, D minor), written for falling asleep to. It takes its mood and colour from Télépopmusik's "Breathe" (2001): lazy swung brushed breakbeat, warm Rhodes, an airy pad, soft sub bass, vinyl warmth, and a close, breathy voice. The melody, chords and words are new; nothing is sampled or quoted. The form breathes in and out: a pad-only intro, verse, "in… and hold…", chorus, a full stop at 2:22, a wordless breakdown, a last chorus and an instrumental outro. Made 2026-10-21 with ACE-Step 1.5 XL turbo (open weights, run locally on the 3090 through ComfyUI). Claude wrote the lyric and the prompt, chose this take from 12 candidates (Whisper lyric check, CLAP timbre scores, spectrograms) and mastered it to -14 LUFS. The breathing light follows a two-bar breath cycle and swells with the music. Audio: /f/slow-tide.mp3