The lead track from Hallows’ ‘Subtle’ EP is a slice of vintage-style dark electropop. The Seattle duo promise to bring ‘tidings of unease: straining loneliness and isolation, anxiety and fears of meteoric nature, the nightmares of encroaching love, dejected vulnerability, and a life extinct of realization’. So far, so bleak.
The alternating female / male vocals bring essential contrast: Vanee D introduces things with an ethereal grace that glides over a trance-inducing analogue synth and thumping (death)disco beat with a massive dominant snare that’s got 1983 written all over it. Then Dom R swoops in low with his sinister baritone and immediately the temperature drops and the shadows become darker. Against a classic four-four bass groove that’s pure Craig Adams, he prowls through a barren post-industrial space, evoking Dance Society and The March Violets in the process. The best kind of claustrophobic darkness.
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