The studio recording of James Arthur’s “Impossible” is an exercise in sonic layering. It features:

Leo hadn’t listened to a clear song since the day everything went silent. He worked as a media archaeologist at the last standing library in Sector 7—really just a basement with servers running on scavenged solar. His specialty: lossless audio. Specifically, the elusive, mythical FLAC . Most people were fine with 128kbps MP3s that sounded like rain on tin. But Leo remembered. He remembered the warmth of a studio master, the breath between piano keys, the way James Arthur’s rasp could crack the air on a proper stereo.

Unlike MP3 or AAC, which discard "redundant" audio data to save space (lossy compression), FLAC compresses a song without removing any musical information. Think of it as a ZIP file for audio. When you play a FLAC file, you are hearing a bit-for-bit identical copy of the original studio master.

: Notably, all proceeds from the single's sales were donated to the charity Together for Short Lives , which supports children with life-limiting conditions.