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On his sophomore album ‘THROUGH BLINDS,’ electronic artist SOFT VEIN boldly pushes forward, finding common ground with his debut album ‘PRESSED IN GLASS’ while evolving and carving out a musical identity of his own.

Dancefloor ready even at its most bleak and melancholic, the 10-track album draws from both the familiar and the new, creating a unique blend of “nostalgic futurism,” with the signature duality of SOFT VEIN’s sound on full display. Entries like “FALLING,” “THROUGH BLINDS,” and “WASTING DAYS” swim and sway in the night, painting bleak, darkly romantic pictures of love and loss; while industrial-tinged tracks like “GOD WHISPERS” and “BLACK BAG” scathe and sneer and stalk, shades of something sinister and paranoid shining through. On the album’s themes and sound, SOFT VEIN’s Justin Chamberlain says:

“This album is more about me as an observer of others, and sometimes even feeling like an observer in my own life. I wrote in this very ‘detached narrator’ sort of way…a lot of yearning, watching and waiting kind of stuff. That’s where the title came from. There’s influences you’d probably expect like Depeche Mode or Clan of Xymox or Nitzer Ebb, but I was also heavily influenced by The Blue Nile and Genesis and Prince. Film and video game scores too, especially Brad Fiedel’s work on the Terminator 2 soundtrack. I was revisiting a lot of things that are very nostalgic for me while making this record.”

Sonically, ‘THROUGH BLINDS’ stays true to these themes, eschewing the icy cold landscape of the first album for heat, desire and danger - mixing/mastering engineer Ewan Alastair Kay (Kontravoid, Zanias) is responsible for the album’s polished sound. Beds of cascading synthesizers and dreamy guitars reveal an aching sentimentality. Rhythms pump and throb from drum machines and bass synthesizers. Strange, metallic percussion and sonic textures fill the spaces between, sounding all at once like obsolescence and futurism, nostalgic yet unfamiliar. Chamberlain’s is the voice of a passionate yet detached narrator, sighing, moaning and sneering over it all - observing, longing, and waiting for the unknown.

‘THROUGH BLINDS’ is streaming everywhere January 17th, 2025 via Artoffact Records, with a physical release on CD and limited ‘translucent CRT-green vinyl.’ The debut single “GOD WHISPERS” is streaming everywhere September 27th.

neurotic erotic romantic darkwave

1. softvein.net