A longtime stalwart of the international dark underground music scene for more than 20 years, Budapest, Hungary based one-man-band Cawatana began as an apocalyptic, neo-classical, dark folk project to slowly shift, around 2018, into darkwave/minimal wave sonic leanings, adopting stripped-down instrumentation heavily based on analog synthesizers and drum machines.
Written originally in 2012 as a tribute to the mid-80s formed Hungarian legendary industrial act CMC (Cro-Magnoni Cola / Cro-Magnon´s Coke), yet shelved, “Splintered” has been recorded exclusively for the first, just dropped, Various/Artists cassette, “SenkWaves – A Senkrecht Compilation”, via the fellow independent label Senkrecht Records, spanning new, old and, to us, well-known bands from the European Darkwave /Post-punk /Minimal Synth community.
Hungarian Látásmód Fúzió includes a previously unreleased version of an older song, while the Austrian Mitra Mitra, the Danish Pulsations, the Turkish Ductape, the Ukrainian Sexual Purity and the Hungarian Empty Story and Utolsó Hullám provide tracks that were only available online until now, whilst beside the aforementioned Catawana, The French Saigon Blue Rain and the Slovakian–Hungarian ImiAFan contribute with previously unreleased songs.
“Splintered”‘s lyrics dive into the heady realm of mind manipulation, inverse thought processes, and blind possession at the hands of an absolute and chaotic system of governance.
Industrialized by metronomic, looping and thumping beats interlaced with ruthless sinister percolating low ends, to channel the wistful forsaken abandon insinuated by chromatic guitar strains and edgy swooshing synthetic swarms, whilst tense vocal iterations laced with a frantic and disaffected tone, drop subtle shivers of fear through a cold relentless force of heavy pain.
Various/Artists “SenkWaves – A Senkrecht Compilation” album is out now, on limited Cassette & Digital, via Budapest label Senkrecht Records.
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