Synth-punk. Is there a better fusion? Fold in some dark wave and you've got something that makes me...work?
That's the effect Sextile has on me, this duo pulling me straight back to art school. That era unleashed music on me like nothing else and the rich and layered sounds were packed with everything I loved about those years.
And that impulse to work? This genre triggers the urge to solve creative puzzles and produce something artsy. Back in school, endless projects and deadlines steered me toward synths, new wave, and industrial music. My fuel was always electronica: house, techno, pre-EDM. Projects meant late nights at my desk, techno pulsing through headphones and that hypnotic, repetitive pulse would unlock something, sending me into a fugue state with the intensity of a runner's high. Those loops might've done more for my creativity than all the external "influences" I was supposed to absorb as an art student.
Then life pulled me somewhere else, and music went silent for years. When I finally came back years later, the scene had shifted a bit. What I'd loved was mostly gone.
Until bands like Sextile. They smashed worlds together: electric beats, drum machines, keyboards, and gritty guitars colliding and coexisting. Shooting them, I felt their relentless grasp on my senses, Mel's silhouetted figure with all the thin tendrils of her hair and dress moving through the lights and fog resembling an exotic jellyfish floating in gem-colored seas. That visual, that sound, brought me right back to my drawing table. I'm late discovering their back catalog, but it all connects: the new wave pulse, the industrial grind, the synth-punk union, and most of all, forward motion. Progress...and accomplishment?
Sometimes creativity takes real work to unlock, and whatever mysterious alchemy Sextile conjures reminded me why that rigor is worth pursuing.