In A Darkened Room’s "VOIX" is like diving into a midnight mirror: you expect to see your reflection, but what greets you are silhouettes, echoes, betrayals, and a heart that both bleeds and yearns. The San Antonio trio (CJ Duron on vocals/guitar, Svia Svenlava on bass, Kandi Keys on synth/piano) have crafted a sophomore record that doesn’t merely dwell in darkness but makes the darkness speak - with nuance, weight and occasional haunting beauty.

Musically, "VOIX" leans hard into gothic rock / dark wave tropes - brooding guitars, lush synths, hypnotic rhythms - but it’s in its lyrical confessions and emotional extremes that it lifts itself beyond mere genre fare. From the opener "When Shadows Come", there is a drama: secret pacts under black moons, love pledged over broken glass, sacrifice before time runs out. It’s not coy. You feel the desperation, the promise, the regret. There is passion here, but also the knowledge that promises made at dusk may unravel come morning.

Tracks like "Sounds of Warning" amplify that tension: voices in the head, echoes of the dead, longing just to feel alive again. The emotional stakes are high. "Winter Storm" freezes the heart in metaphor; cold isn’t just ambient atmosphere - it’s a psychic condition. "Hammer & Nail" shifts toward confrontation: if you want me to decay, just say it. Maybe you want something beautiful, maybe just something honest in its ugliness.

In "Self Affliction", the grappling with self, blame, loss, waiting: these lyrics walk a tightrope of vulnerability. They are wounded but not broken. The confession “I almost lost my mind” isn’t hyperbole - it stands as a threshold, the moment where empathy meets collapse. "Cemetery Trees" turns the personal into the landscape: parks, shows, eyes that once promised something, now emptied. There’s betrayal and longing, but also a sense of destiny misread. "Mission" burns with a mixture of lust, ferocity, and disillusion: to “feed until the end”, “call for me when you’re in need”, “your cruelty” all collide into an anthem of knowing too much, hoping for too much, feeling everything. And "Trial by Fire", long and epic, acts like the crucible: after betrayal, after passion, after all the emotional trial, what remains?

One of the album’s strongest qualities is how it balances grandeur with intimacy. CJ Duron’s vocal delivery often feels close, confessional, raw - so when the band swells behind him, the contrast hits harder. The production is rich without being overly polished; the synths and guitars are layered so that shadows lurk under melody rather than being masked by them.

If there is a weakness, it lies in moments where the emotional intensity risks becoming familiar: betrayal, desperation, broken love - these are well-trodden territories in gothic music. In a few tracks, "VOIX" treads close to clichés (“black hearts”, “sacrifice”, “lust and lies”) without always finding a radical new angle. But given the sincerity and the craft on display, those moments feel more like echoes of influence than lapses in originality.

In the end, "VOIX" is more than a collection of heartbreak songs: it is a kind of ritual. To listen is to stand under the black moon, pledge your promises, feel the ache of their breaking, but then watch for new light in the shards. In A Darkened Room don’t avoid the darkness - they enter it willingly, map its boundaries, and try to find what remains when the shadows come. For fans of goth with guts, of vulnerability not sugarcoated, "VOIX" is a powerful journey; for anyone seeking polish over passion, it might sting.

André Vida’s "Breathless" is not a saxophone record in the usual sense but an excavation of what happens when you remove the very thing that normally animates the horn: breath. Vida, a Berlin-based saxophonist known for his collaborations with Anthony Braxton, Arto Lindsay, and visual artist Anri Sala, here sets himself a paradoxical task - playing without blowing - and discovers a whole new language hiding inside the instrument’s bones. What emerges are clicks, thuds, sticky releases of pads, the percussive punctuation of fingers, amplified and extended through distortion and subtle synthesis until they glow like phantom melodies.

This is music that hovers between archaeology and invention, where what is normally incidental becomes the main voice. It can feel ascetic, at times demanding patience, but in its best moments it makes you lean in and notice things usually drowned in the flood of sound. The tracklist itself feels like a catalogue of transformations: short, cryptic movements like “Danders” or “Sidgeye” contrast with the shimmering, more expansive “Frsssshht”, while the doubled presence of “Celeste” on both sides of the LP works like a palimpsest, a reminder that even repetition can reveal difference.

Vida’s strategy is risky - too much processing and the delicate mechanics vanish, too little and the experiment risks drying out - but for the most part he balances on that tightrope with poise. What "Breathless" ultimately communicates is not the absence of air but its transmutation: the breath lives in the resonance of keys, in the delayed echoes of release, in the electronic prolongation that lets these micro-gestures hang in the room like vapor. It is a strange and beautiful record, not designed for background listening but for a kind of heightened attention, as though your own ear were pressed inside the saxophone body alongside his.

Vida reminds us that music is not just what we produce deliberately but also what leaks out of our gestures, our gaps, our failures to conceal the mechanics of playing. "Breathless" is a work of intimate radicalism, funny in its perversity, touching in its vulnerability, and strangely uplifting in its insistence that even silence and friction can sing.

There’s something both modest and ambitious about launching a label with a release that bears the same name. "Prea", the inaugural statement by Fvthom, isn’t just an EP - it’s a declaration of intent. It’s like building your own stage, climbing onto it, and then asking the audience to imagine the curtains, the lights, the entire theater along with you.

The opener, “Prea”, feels almost like a riddle: instead of coming out with pounding bass or jagged beats, Fvthom begins with a piano miniature, delicate and restrained. It’s an odd yet deliberate gesture, like shaking hands before leading someone into a maze. The quiet introduction suggests that beneath the techno leanings, there’s a desire to frame club music as something that can start with intimacy rather than bombast.

Then the labyrinth begins. “Trovat” steps into the floor with clipped rhythms and a restless forward motion - its geometry is techno, but its shading leans toward IDM, folding layers of detail into the beat. “Fangst” keeps the momentum but thickens the textures, with a weight that seems to drag and pull at the rhythm, as if the dance floor itself were caught in undertow. And then “Butin” arrives as the EP’s closing argument: four-on-the-floor propulsion laced with subtle experiments, like a club track trying to remember its dreams mid-set.

What makes "Prea" intriguing is not just the stylistic oscillation but the refusal to lock itself inside one mode. It’s both a demo reel and a manifesto: piano sketches, techno drives, IDM detours, and exploratory gestures exist side by side, less as a definitive sound and more as a promise of multiplicity. Fvthom seems to be saying: "this is not the answer, this is the starting point".

It also matters that this is the debut release of a label built to house not just music but videos and collaborations. That context makes the EP feel like the foundation stone of a larger project. The tracks themselves are enjoyable, but perhaps more importantly, they radiate potential - little doors opening to places we can’t yet see.

Listening to "Prea" is a bit like watching a painter put down the first strokes on a blank canvas: maybe you don’t yet know the full picture, but you can sense the hand is steady, and the ideas want to spill outward. If the name “Prea” means anything, it’s not just a label, or a track, or an EP - it’s a signal that something is just beginning, and we’ve only been offered the prologue.

Ethan Tait’s "Safe Space EP" emerges as a quiet assertion - a set of five tracks stemming from Cape Town that want to hold you gently rather than throw you into the pit. Though rooted in house, this EP isn’t content to shuffle beats only; it stretches into ambient pauses, melodic breathing, moments of introspective stillness that feel like catching one’s breath.

The journey begins with “Washoe”, a track that serves as a gentle doorway. There’s a pulse, yes, but it’s patient - like waking up before dawn, hearing the hum of silence around you. The percussion is respectful of space; the synths and chords drift like early light, promising clarity without demanding awakening.

“Stillness” leans further into that promise. It’s slower, more thoughtful. There are textures here that feel like worn fabric, soft edges. You can almost feel the coolness of Cape Town air in the morning, or the hush that descends when everything presses pause. This is Tait at his most meditative - no rush, no flash, just accumulation of mood.

Then with “Lobe”, there is a pivot: things sharpen slightly, but not abruptly. The kick returns, the groove is more pronounced. It’s still house, but gliding toward tension. You sense undercurrents - emotional or otherwise - that suggest this isn’t simply about moving your feet, but moving something inside.

“Kama Muta” (a term from Sanskrit meaning “moved by love”) is perhaps the emotional center of the EP. It manages to blend warmth and longing, chord progressions that hover, subtle changes in texture that suggest something vulnerable wanting to emerge. It’s a song that affirms: being moved by love or grief or beauty is part of being alive, even when everything else seems to blur.

Finally, “Kuumba” (Swahili for "creativity") closes the EP with a gentle uplift. The beat returns in full, the harmony is more certain, the space more open. It’s not a triumphant dance floor bomb so much as a declaration: after the introspection, there is light. After the waiting, there is motion.

What makes "Safe Space" special is its refusal to choose between pulse and pause. Many house producers lean hard into the dancefloor moment; some ambient/electronic producers swim in atmosphere and forget rhythm. Tait walks the border: he lets you drift, but also lets you move. He shows that rhythm doesn’t always need friction; sometimes it’s the whisper trailing behind the kick, the echo in the chord, the space between beat and silence.

Also notable is the way Tait composes melodies here: not as hooks to hook onto, but as threads you might follow through your own thoughts. It’s music that offers companionship in solitude. Even “Stillness”, with its near-absence, isn’t empty - it’s an invitation to listen inward.

If there’s a critique, perhaps the EP could stretch certain ideas a little more - some tracks feel like preludes or sketch lines. But part of the charm is exactly that: you feel these tracks are breaths, not declarations. They leave space, literally and emotionally, to fill with your own memories.

In sum, "Safe Space EP" is not a safe space in the sense of predictability - it’s safe because it accepts fracture, stillness, uncertainty. It’s the sound of someone saying, “I don’t know what comes next, but I trust in the tension between what is and what might be”. For listeners tired of both relentless energy and passive ambience, this EP gives something in between - a liminal lean, a soft landing between beats.

Failure has rarely sounded this triumphant. On "Better Failing", Nic Krog - Danish-born, Berlin-based, and allergic to musical straightjackets - reclaims collapse as a creative force. If their earlier "Reproaching the Absurd" twisted existential dread into abrasive soundscapes, this new EP leans into the rubble with a sly grin, guided by the philosophy of Jack Halberstam’s "The Queer Art of Failure". Instead of chasing perfection, Krog revels in the cracks, glitches, and derailments, making joy out of the wreckage.

The record unfolds like a five-part play in which the protagonist keeps tripping over their shoelaces, only to turn the pratfall into choreography. Opener "Not Your Night" pretends it’s headed for the club, then veers into aleatoric jazz chaos, as if the dancefloor itself lost its balance. "Parasite" hijacks that momentum with Jeremy Coubrough’s saxophone skronk and Krog’s deadpan delivery, a duet of irritation and delight. By "You Do You", reggaeton beats meet factory clatter - romance between bodily rhythm and mechanical whirr, mocking the very idea of “desirable desires”.

"Win" ups the ante: reel-to-reel tape noise masquerades as a guitar solo, pounding bass propels everything forward, and suddenly the EP feels like a manifesto written in feedback. The title track, "Better Failing", ties it all together - a mutant anthem where dancehall, no wave, and rave don’t coexist so much as they collapse into one another, spinning disorientation into exhilaration.

Krog’s real sleight of hand is to turn failure into a texture, a compositional principle, even a groove. You don’t just hear the collapse; you dance with it, you laugh with it, you recognize yourself in its awkward contortions. The result is a paradoxical victory lap disguised as an EP: a short, jagged celebration of imperfection that feels oddly liberating in its refusal to get it right.

It’s called "Better Failing", but really, it’s about the art of failing better - and, by the end, realizing you’re not failing at all.