In a sound that Pitchfork described as, "the sonic equivalent of a fashion show put on by depressive pill abusers; malevolent, but mightily sexy", one of the more distinctive deviations within the current vogue of synthwave can be found in Robert Alfons' TR/ST. Initially working as a duo with Maya Postepski of Austra on a series of albums for Arts & Crafts, Alfons' project is now largely a solo enterprise. This series of changes he explored with Interview Magazine, and in conversation with the San Francisco Chronicle, "TR/ST Pushes Past Fear to Create New Atmospheric Soundscapes". Like much of this current scene, Alfon's music was born of looking back to a bandwidth of music within the goth and early electro-industrial sounds of the 1980s and 1990s. An overview of these original darkwave and synthwave subgenres from that decade, and their contemporary revival was mapped by Vice in their, "A Brief History of Musical Waves from New to Next". Inspired by this original era, and the balancing act of its particular brand of starkly minimal, angular, existential electronic dance pop of alienation and heartbreak, a new generation of producers have come to the fore, presented by The Guardian in, “‘The Body was the Drums, the Brain was the Synthesiser’: Darkwave, the Gothic Genre Lighting up Pop”. A cross-section of artists within this subgenre, Molchat Doma, The KVB, Xeno & Oaklander, Twin Tribes, She Past Away, and Boy Harsher, express a spectrum of variations on an aesthetic of darkly romantic, sexually fetishistic, and imperially fatalistic thematic concerns. In describing Boy Harsher's sound as a "moving choker-collar muscle-mash" which "contains a dark power, an atavistic pull", the music press has rightly depicted the central components from which the variables pivot and deviate around. Alfons' own mutation of this sound on "Destroyer", will be heard in dates across North America this month, including a night at Seattle's Neumos alongside composer Lydia Ainsworth.
