Optic Sink

Optic Sink

Relentless Metamorphosis

Dig! Records

***Natalie Hoffmann, Ben Bauermeister and Keith Cooper are back after their benchmark third album, Lucky Number (for FEEL IT RECORDS) with this long-percolating project of original compositions for the short films of mid-20th century filmmaker, Maya Deren (also an adroit dancer, writer, and general badass.) Experience over 40 minutes of aural and visual mind fry, translated sonically for the body and soul, as only this southern post-punk trio dare deliver."I was fortunate to have two of my favorite professors at Memphis College of Art, Mary Molinary and Jill Wissmiller, show me Maya Deren’s work while I was a student. I was in a poetry class with Mary and an experimental cinema class with Jill. Both perfect and very different contexts to see and discuss Deren’s work.Meshes of the Afternoon redefined how I thought about both film and poetry. The framing, the pace, the repetition, and her strong use of the body and its contrasting movements were all so new and revolutionary to me. Her films were poems, they were choreographed dances, and they were hugely avant-garde and experimental, especially for the time she was making them. (Meshes of the Afternoon came out in 1943!)Crosstown Arts asked Optic Sink to score her films in 2022, and we were honored to be part of bringing her work to a bigger crowd in Memphis. After the show, people from the crowd enthusiastically discussed how incredible her work was and questioned why they had never heard of her, even though she was such a...

Optic Sink

Lucky Number

Feel It

***"Lucky Number, the third album from Memphis trio Optic Sink, finds the band both refining and expanding their hypnotic mix of post-punk and dance music, resulting in a sharp and moving exploration of surfaces, shadows, and self-delusion.Natalie Hoffmann (NOTS) has come into her full power as a lyricist. Her work on earlier records (see 'Modelesque' and 'Glass Blocks') shows her talent for exploring the hidden shallows of modern life, but here the funhouse mirrors are balanced by painful longing and drops of truth that leak through the cracks. The music reflects this—under Bauermeister’s driving grooves and the songs’ tight arrangements lurk hidden complexities, thanks in part to Keith Cooper’s exceptional, angular work on guitar and bass.'Unreachable / untouchable space / glass tower / a fragile face / when you’re here / where do you go?' Hoffmann sings over the sinister, nocturnal funk of 'Construction.' Few bands can match the hard beauty of Depeche Mode, New Order, and A Certain Ratio—Optic Sink manages to do more than that, adding their own sad, cutting wisdom. Produced and recorded by Caufield Schnug of Sweeping Promises, Lucky Number is out Fall 2025 on Feel It Records."—Dan Hornsby of True Green / author of Sucker and Via Negativa

Optic Sink

Glass Blocks

Feel It

***Expanding on the magnetic, minimalist post-punk frontier first chartered on their 2020 Goner debut, Optic Sink return with their second album, Glass Blocks. Hot on the heels of their recent EP on Spacecase Records, the Memphis trio of Natalie Hoffmann, Ben Bauermeister, and Keith Cooper ventured out to Lawrence, Kansas to record at the home studio of Caufield Schnug (Sweeping Promises). The resulting seven originals and a rendition of LiLiPUT's A Silver Key Can Open An Iron Lock, Somewhere define Optic Sink and their remarkable style with a clarity and power seldom realized in a studio setting. Hoffmann and Bauermeister command the high end of the mix with a gamut of perfectly dialed synth and percussive tones while Cooper's bass serves as rhythmic anchor. There's far more to dive into, whether it's the cold, driving beat of "Modelesque" or the minimal, percussive brilliance heard on "Glass Blocks". Perhaps the best part of the formula is the sheer amount of natural energy that gleams through the mix. Like a warm refraction of musical chemistry and originality, Optic Sink have struck gold with Glass Blocks.

Optic Sink

A Face In The Crowd

Spacecase

***“A Face in the Crowd” is the new 7” from Memphis’ Optic Sink. The group features Natalie Hoffmann (Nots), Ben Bauermeister (Magic Kids) and Keith Cooper (The Sheiks). Optic Sink released their well-received debut LP with Goner in 2020. For fans of synth-punk / minimalist-synth acts like Oppenheimer Analysis, The Petticoats, and Robert Rental and Thomas Leer. Limited to 300 copies.

Optic Sink

S/t

Goner

With Optic Sink, Natalie Hoffmann (NOTS) creates a musical paradox: an endeavor that doesn’t really seem to belong to any particular time or place, constructed with sounds that are synthesized and stripped down, yet bristling with urgency and brutalist emotion. The project took shape in 2018, when NOTS were on a break to write and woodshed music for 3, and Hoffmann began experimenting on her four-track recorder. Optic Sink surfaced as a performance soon after, appearing at bars, venues and festivals, including Memphis Concrète and SXSW. Hoffmann drives Optic Sink in live performances and on the self-titled debut album, with percussionist Ben Bauermeister (Magic Kids, Toxie, A55 Conducta) collaborating from the co-pilot’s seat. Setting up camp on the post-punk side of the minimal electronic scene, Optic Sink eschew computers for a warmer, decidedly human soundscape. Hoffmann’s power, and the tension she generates between human and machine, evokes Maria, the rebellious teacher-turned-Maschinenmensch in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and Ripley, the swaggering, sacrificing heroine of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise. Dadaism and the Bauhaus movement could both be cited as influences; so might the existentialist philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir and the jump-cuts of Maya Deren. Written over a two-year period, the eight songs that comprise Optic Sink sound like they should’ve been recorded in a bathysphere or on a space station—instead, they were captured via analog tape at Andrew McCalla’s Bunker Audio studio in summer 2019. Bauermeister’s inventive aux percussion and drum machine work provides the backdrop, while Hoffmann stokes a proverbial furnace...