Nightsister
Confession Chamber
self-released
Portland’s Nightsister slightly droll and self-effacing delivery has never gotten in the way of their musical aesthetic; a mix of classic goth rock, hazy darkwave, and a melodic sensibility you might think was cribbed from 80s soft rock as much as synthpop. That easy going yet also downcast combo continues on second full-length Confession Chamber, which has been primed by singles like “In Your Eyes” (think Jimmy Sommerville fronting Forever Grey) for nearly a year. Whether it’s a comparatively long development cycle or simply the range of Nightsister’s sounds, there is a somewhat frantic careening from mood to mood and style to style across the thirteen full tracks here, hopping from the high-gloss detuned synths of the snarling “Baptized In Gasoline” right into the coldwave of “Linger” which has all the definition of something recorded on a Fisher-Price tape tape. Still, if you have a catholic taste for just about everything goth adjacent there’s a solid balance of melody and atmosphere to be found here.
Signal72
Static Fields
FLOWTAPE
We don’t know much about ex-London, now US-based producer Signal72, but if we had to guess, we’d put money on him being conversant in classic 90s electro-industrial sounds. Which is not to say that the material on the Static Fields is necessarily in that style, but there’s definitely some application of its structures and sound design in the makeup of its four originals. The title track applies skittering beats and heavily reverbed synths, creating a thick fog of ambience for its snaky synthlines to wander through, with the hiss of cymbals that could be mistaken for whispers. On “30 Seconds” a rapidly evolving synthlines and pitched down voices, either sampled or spoken it’s impossible to tell, share space with deep bass drones and broken percussion that never fully sits right to unsettling effect. The highlight is the tense and gnarly “Black Transimission”, where the chatter of intertwined sequences is set against a half-time kick and snare, the space in the groove taken up by random beeps and squeals, unrelenting without becoming cacophonous. An act to watch in the months to come.
