WL//WH Premiere: VLIMMER Explores Mankind’s Inability To Change in “Augendrang” [Blackjack Illuminist Records]

WL//WH Premiere VLIMMER

Berlin’s one-man band Vlimmer, the main moniker of the dynamic genre-defying artist and Blackjack Illuminist label founder, Alexander Leonard Donat (a.k.a. ASSASSUN, Feverdreamt, Fir Cone Children, and 1/2 of Whole), unveils the final excerpt, “Augendrang,” lifted from the upcoming sixth album, “Kiemenatmung,” scheduled for early November on Vinyl/CD & Tape.

The single, which WL//WH is pleased to premiere, will be released as a limited edition 2-track CD single with a cover of The Bangles “Eternal Flame” on the flip, on October 23rd via Blackjack Illuminist Records.

While I remember writing and simultaneously recording it for fun just because I had some time to waste before watching a match of the 2026 Football World Cup, actually the song is about mankind’s inability to change in the face of demise, as much as it’s about the individual struggling to land on the same page as a loved one.Donat says

“Augendrang / An Urge In The Eyes,” or more specifically a fever pushing through the eyes, shrouded in eerie, breathy warbles, lies on a lively underpinning of wobbly, shifting beats and elastic, syncopated bass grooves beneath the struggle of gloomy, anxious male vocals, twisting and acting sassy inside a busy, surreal entanglement of obsessive, melancholic guitar lines and echoing choppy, sharp-cut stabs, layered with an array of skewed, chiming synth flutters and desolate drifts, to finally spiral into a grey, decreasing intermission before bursting back outward toward the dismal reality of a society in which “everyone is outside, angry.”

Vlimmer‘s new digital/CD single “Augendrang” will be released tomorrow, October 23, 2026, as a limited edition 2-track CD single with a cover of the 1989 The Bangles power ballad, “Eternal Flame,” as the B-side, via Blackjack Illuminist Records‘ Bandcamp.