REDEEM DOWNLOAD CODE

Enter the download code you received with your purchase to claim your downloads. Keep in mind many mobile devices don't have built in support for opening ZIP files; you may want to download on a computer.


LOGIN

Login with your existing account.

CREATE ACCOUNT

Create an account to purchase items.

Passwords must be at least 6 characters

S/t
LP $17.50

10/23/2020 767870661815 

166 GONE 


CD $12.00

10/16/2020 767870661822 

166 GONE CD 


MP3 $9.90

10/02/2020 767870661822 

166 GONE 


FLAC $11.99

10/02/2020 767870661822 

166 GONE 


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 in the foreground, dryly revisiting and repeating words and phrases until they’re imbued with portent. Hoffmann’s synthesizers add texture with growls and shrieks, often mutating danceable rhythms into shimmering walls of sound.  
Optic Sink defy categories, shape-shifting from cold wave to psychedelia to distorted noise rock. In the process—which frequently occurs in a single song—Optic Sink claim unchartered territory as they cathartically fragment and reassemble sounds, concepts, and verbal constructs. The conflict they define is life in America in 2020, finding beauty in the journey despite what the final resolution might be.

Tracklist

  1. #1 Drone

    Listen

  2. #2 Personified

    Listen

  3. #3 Soft Quiet Life

    Listen

  4. #4 Dumb Luck

    Listen

  5. #5 Exhibitionist

    Listen

  6. #6 Vanishing Point

    Listen

  7. #7 Girls in Gray

    Listen

  8. #8 Set Roulette

    Listen

Related Items

Aquarian Blood

Savage Mind
Goner

Optic Sink

A Face In The Crowd
Spacecase

Aquarian Blood

A Love That Leads To War
Goner

Ex-cult

Mister Fantasy / Through The Blinds
Goner

Optic Sink

Glass Blocks
Feel It

Moving Finger

Smokin The Crack Of Dawn
Goner

Crown Court

Mad In England
Goner

Bobo, Harlan T.

A History Of Violence
Goner

Legs, The

Aaaa The New Memphis Legs
Goner

Eddy Current Suppression Ring

Rush To Relax (Digital Single)
Goner

Nots

Virgin Mary
Goner