Only Good Dreams for Me by Zaumne

When digging into a weirdly specific and wildly popular Spotify genre playlist, we find substance melting against a feeble frame of aesthetics, each song interchangeable as the entire unit blurs into one singular yet unfocused sonic setting. With the new album Only Good Dreams for Me by Zaumne, this gap expands to absurd proportions, throwing dark pop aesthetics into piercing, intense focus, spending the entire creative budget on a monumental frame while purposely forgoing all substantive cladding. Through the dizzying field recordings, unrecognizable vocal samples, distant synth melodies, thumping deep percussion, and overwhelming low pads, we receive the purest distillation of the melodramatic liminality that so many popular artists chase, unencumbered by the conventions of verse, chorus, and lyric. However, as soon as we’ve finally arrived in the fullness of this space that so many other artists have hinted at, we recognize our ironic situation. We’ve arrived in liminality itself, finding comfort in our inevitable, constant movement rather than finding an aesthetic home in which to finally rest.