Reviews
GINA ÉTÉ – Prosopagnosia
With her sophomore album „Prosopagnosia“, GINA ÉTÉ releases a slow-burning album that demands time to appreciate.
You know this slight tiredness, this exhausting saturation after a big dinner? When you just ate a bit too much and hope that the subsequent espresso will ease the burden?
That’s precisely the feeling I’m left with by GINA ÉTÉ’s new album, Prosopagnosia. Granted, this metaphor could be perceived as rather negative. But it’s more a fair warning: the album is heavy and not easily digested.

First, I have to get it out of the way: GINA ÉTÉ has teased this album with the single release of Fyou:you, a pumping track with Swiss dialect lyrics. Naturally, this limits the song’s message about bodies, borders, gender, and discrimination. That’s why ÉTÉ has invited seven European musicians to create covers in multiple languages.
Despite this innovative approach, Fyou:you falls off in the grand scheme of Prosopagnosia. As a standalone single, the track and the idea work, but in the album’s context, the sound is too rash and cuts through an otherwise consistent album.
But this remains pretty much my only nitpick of GINA ÉTÉ’s otherwise breathtaking sophomore album, filled with filigrée and whimsical arrangements between chamber music, pop, and electronic sounds. I once wrote about GINA ÉTÉ: „This Zurich-based musician is something of a Swiss answer to Björk: influenced by many different styles, mysterious and—once you have immersed yourself in this sound universe—disarming.“ And this conclusion still rings true years later.
Often, the songs are eerily haunting, like Love To Work, an exploration of care and sex work. ÉTÉ explains in the press release: „Any work historically done by mostly women to care for others is underestimated, ill-paid, stigmatised, often done under precarious conditions. With Love To Work, I want to fight for their appreciation and for better, safer work conditions.”
Where Love To Work has its very unique, bold energy, The Bet and My Friend feature a flowing beauty, a fragile innocence in their melodies. In those more quiet moments, GINA ÉTÉ excels with impressive brilliance.

Again, I have to repeat: Prosopagnosia is not an easily accessible work. It has a certain melancholy, a darker tone to it. The arrangements are complex and ever-shifting, like sonic chameleons. The themes explored aren’t a walk in the park either; they prompt us to reflect and be critical.
It took me several listening sessions, spread over a couple of weeks, to truly appreciate Prosopagnosia. First, my verdict would’ve been much worse. But now, the album has blossomed and grown on me. The intricate compositions, the sense that every little thing in those songs is meaningful and done with intent.
Take your time with this one.

GINA ÉTÉ – Prosopagnosia
Release: 07/02/2025
- Prolog – This Mess I’m In
- Love to Work
- La Joie (au bout d’un moment)
- The Bet
- F***you:you
- Interlude – Your Opinion
- The Last Air
- Blindside
- My Friend
- Your Opinion
Them Flying Monkeys – Best Behavior
Are you looking for uncompromising rock music, hypnotic and punkish? Are you looking for a sound that pulls you into the moment? Listen to „Best Behavior“ by Them Flying Monkeys.
Reading the news leaves me depressed, angry, even furious. And this bottled-up energy needs a valve, one that Best Behavior delivers. The third album by Portuguese band Them Flying Monkeys is an unapologetic series of hammering, rampaging rock staccatos.
Despite infusing more electronic elements, Them Flying Monkey’s sound remains harsh and loud, only rarely enthralled by catchy melodies while otherwise relentlessly stomping and shouting like a child at the cashier wanting a treat.

And they certainly don‘t beat around the bush: Beautiful Mess, a track with intro quality, opens the curtain with vigour. Explosive bursts light up like fireworks. From there on out, their onslaught just never slows down anymore.
Pretty Sticks, released as a single last year, sets the tone and style of the album. It’s a chopped-up rock sound they deliver, driven by Hugo Luzio’s merciless drums and João Tomázio’s bass. Vocalist Luís Judícibus often leans more into urging shouts than melodic singing, giving the songs a punkish vibe, while Diogo Sá (guitar) and Francisco Dias Pereira (keys) join the action, laying a carpet of psychedelic sounds.
The whole album feels integrated, yet each track remains distinct. Next Emma Stone and Everybody Everything lean into a rapid punk rock à là Sum 41. The chorus of Great Song borders at hardcore. And they’re so comfortable with their sonic signature that they can even make others work their own with Jacques Dutronc’s Les Gens Sont Fous, les Temps Sont Flous.
The only breather on Best Behavior is Not Me, at least in the beginning. A reduced composition, highlighting the spoken word by Judícibus. But the initial calm doesn’t last long, as they soon escalate to a final crescendo.
Them Flying Monkeys have a hypnotic quality regardless of their noisy attire. But it isn’t just their jackhammering composition but also their lyrics. They’re devoid of any useless fat, trimmed to the bare minimum, often hard-hitting one-liners, repeated to burn it in your mind. They take this concept to the extreme in Fake It:
You gotta fake it
’til you make it
Or something worth being done
On endless repeat, as I’ve done to write this review, Best Behavior can get a bit tiring because the sound is so raw, so unyielding, and urging you can’t ignore it. You have to listen—it’s not made for background drizzle. But honestly, that’s more praise than criticism. We certainly don’t need more music that doesn’t truly grab your attention, that doesn't pull you back to the moment.
This uncompromising energy of Best Behavior is mere genius.

Them Flying Monkeys – Best Behavior
Release: 24/01/2025
- Beautiful Mess
- Pretty Sticks
- Next Emma Stone
- Great Song
- Everybody Everything
- Not Me
- Les gens sont fous, les temps sont flous
- Aim
- Fake It
- Wilds
Hit and Miss in the Heartbreak Hotel
Dutch-German Luna Morgenstern’s EP «heartbreak hotel» glitters in all shades of hyperpop. Some tracks excel, and others try a tad too much.
Dutch-German Luna Morgenstern’s EP «heartbreak hotel» glitters in all shades of hyperpop. But it’s trying a tad too much.
There were almost no hints in which direction Luna Morgenstern would develop back in 2021 when I heard (and very much enjoyed) her single In My Head. Despite having the ingredients of a catchy pop song, it felt different. The gigantic climax. Morgenstern’s impressive courage in letting down the guards and granting an intimate insight.
The latest development became more evident with 2023’s Jealous—hyperactive, catchy, UK Garage mixed with pop. But it worked perfectly, and again, Morgenstern caught my admiration.
And today, Luna Morgenstern has gone entirely down the neon-coloured rabbit hole of hyperpop. Her new Extended Play is called heartbreak hotel, and it’s packed with overwhelming tracks—aesthetically somewhere between 90s rave and 2000s bubblegum pop.

The opener, hush hush, kicks it all off with a thick layer of autotune. Admittedly, the synth melody lingering in the background has a grip but drowns under the opulent UK garage-styled beats. The track just tries a bit too hard to encompass everything and nails nothing, really.
On to the title track, and that‘s a different beast. The bell-like melody sounds already promising, almost sinister and dangerous. Then, Morgenstern‘s voice—melancholic and full of regret. A crunchy beat enters the heartbreak hotel. It’s a slow and creeping track; and one that highlights her strengths in songwriting, too.
i don’t have many belongings
backpack with my longings
leave them all at the door
—room number seven
Yes, heartbreak hotel is worthy of being called a title track. If you only listen to one track of this EP, this should be the one. It perfectly accomplishes what Morgenstern set out to do, as she states in the EP’s promotional material: «I wanted to capture the feeling of detachment right after the separation, that can almost feel like a vacuum or being stuck in emotional confinement.»
But then, we come to miss u, and while the beat has a nostalgic feel, the song, a clichée love song, is relatively bland, lapping along with nothing spicing it up. I feel I have already heard this song a thousand times.
Deep basses make a return in spiral, and Luna Morgenstern shows her experimental side even better, indulging in playful twists and surprising turns. The result is a little less accessible but more intriguing.
Coming full circle to the autotune and hyperpop excess, somebody else is indeed less overwhelming than hush hush. It has a slight hymnic quality but simultaneously feels too restrained and never truly breaks free of its constraints. In a sense, the music reflects the lyric’s tale of the ambivalence of looking for solace in a rebound while still grieving a breakup.
With free/fall, the EP finds its closure in an oddly sparsely arranged piece that puts Morgenstern’s voice and lyrics in the spotlight. Seemingly out of place among the opulent compositions, free/fall winds you down from the sensory overload that preceded. It’s also a callback to her style a few years back, to songs like In My Head: an emotionally captivating and beautiful pop sound with a very personal style of songwriting.
With heartbreak hotel Luna Morgenstern takes a shot at a conceptual record. It deals with the stages and facets of a breakup, the pain that comes with the death of love. Diving into hyperpop as a general soundscape is admittedly a risky and unexpected choice for such a sad topic.
Yet, the bold approach doesn’t always pay off. While heartbreak hotel, spiral, and free/fall provide moments of excellence, the other tracks try too hard or not hard enough.

Luna Morgenstern – heartbreak hotel
Release: 24 January 2025
- hush hush
- heartbreak hotel
- miss u
- spiral
- somebody else
- free/fall
Valentino Vivace – Discoteca Vivace
Switzerland’s rising star of Italo Disco, Valentino Vivace, presents his sophomore album. A short burst of retro vibes, neon lights, and tropical nights. It is an escape from the grey reality.
Hot and humid night. Glittering lights. The dance floor is clear for Valentino Vivace.
After his self-published debut, Meteoriti, in 2022, the Swiss Italo Disco upstart his sophomore album, Discoteca Vivace. The title is a promise.
Vivace’s work is short but concise: If we ignore the opening Preludio and the Interludio (prima dello slow), he leaves us with six tracks. With this runtime, we’re more in EP territory. But let’s just leave this technicality aside for now.

First, if Italo Disco isn’t your thing, you keep far away from Discoteca Vivace. All that’s waiting for you are sticky and sugary tracks that celebrate 80s nostalgia. Neon lights, Lamborghini Countach, palm-lined coastlines, tropical nights. And yeah, this sound has a feverish erotic quality.
As Valentino Vivace explains in the press release, the album’s concept is pretty simple: «The idea of the album was to represent the different moments of a club night. From the pure energy of Italo Disco to the endorphin-fueled climax of the night, and finally to the slow, dreamy tracks at six in the morning when the sun rises again.»
Deep basslines, flickering synths, catchy hooks—it’s all there. Sometimes, Vivace takes it slow, as in Ti sento or Baia Degli Angeli, his hommage to the deceased Italo Disco pioneer Pino D’Angiò. But then, there are Hulahoop, Eroi, or Anima romantica, the faster-paced, vibrant bangers. They are—similar to previous tracks like Autoradio or Insieme—designed to stir euphoria and shower you with dopamine, and do so successfully.
Discoteca Vivace is a short-lasting burst. But for someone like me, who is not hugely invested in the genre, it’s actually the perfect length. The production is tight, a significant improvement from Meteoriti, and there’s a consistency in songwriting connecting the tracks to an intriguing offer, pushing the initial ideas to the next level.
Only Hype?
Maybe more of a concern than a criticism would be the overdose of retro vibes. With this album, Vivace doubles down on this exaggerated version of something perceived as vintage sound. Acts like Hurts or Crimer spring to mind, cooking with similar recipes. Initially met with frenetic hype, it‘s hard to maintain a larger audience. All hypes ultimately die down; enjoy it while it lasts.
However, Valentino Vivace’s challenge will be to evolve the sound into something more contemporary and remain fresh and surprising.

But today, that‘s still all hypothetical. Discoteca Vivace offers you all the shades of Italo Disco you could wish for—the soothing slow dance and the pumping and thumping anthems. And the sound’s hedonistic, devil-may-care attitude unifies an undeniable, sprawling coolness and a desire for escapism.

Valentino Vivace – Discoteca Vivace
Release: 24/01/2025
- Preludio
- RGB
- Hulahoop
- Baia degli Angeli
- Interludio (prima dello show)
- Ti sento
- Eroi
- Anima romantica
Franz Ferdinand – The Human Fear
Franz Ferdinand often rely on their trusted recipe on their sixth studio album, «The Human Fear». But it is the other moments that are truly exciting.
There was a time when you couldn’t get around Franz Ferdinand. When Take Me Out was a staple of every indie party where skinny-jeans-wearing hipsters went wild on the dancefloor. But that was long ago.
No doubt, with their self-titled debut in 2004, Franz Ferdinand shaped the great indie rock wave of the new millennium alongside bands like The Libertines or the Arctic Monkeys. And today, the album can easily be considered a classic.
Catchy riffs, a hopping and danceable groove, and Alex Kapranos’ meandering croon always made Franz Ferdinand’s sound attractive. Over time, they began refining their rattling rock sound with more electronic elements, culminating in 2018’s album Always Ascending. However, the album arguably doesn’t hold up to its predecessors.

Now, the Scots return after the longest break between albums with their sixth record: The Human Fear. «On the album, I’m talking about different fears that I’ve seen in other people: fear of social isolation, fear of leaving an institution, fear of leaving or staying in a relationship,» explained Kapranos to NME.
It must be frustrating for the band to have reached such heights with its first record. You’ll always be compared to this out-of-the-gate success, and you must struggle to preserve that legacy. How gracefully age Franz Ferdinand now on their new album?
Well, with a few outrageous exceptions, they dialled back the electronic heavy-handedness of Always Ascending. The Human Fear, a concept album around the titular emotion, seeks many routes to explore the topic. From the boldly stomping Hooked to the dragging, Greek-inspired Black Eyelashes and the Beatles-channelling Audacious.
There are definitely glimmers of brilliance on The Human Fear when Franz Ferdinand excel in what they do best: these rough-around-the-edges and addictively danceable anthems.
However, in some tracks, you hear them trying to cook with the recipe they’ve so perfectly refined but forget to add the spices—something that surprises and gives the taste a new spin.
The result: Franz Ferdinand become their own cover band. Songs like Build It Up, Cats, or The Birds aren’t bad, but they’re also not really exciting in the sense that there’s something new waiting for you.
The Human Fear is, in conclusion, a walk down the middle. Franz Ferdinand often autopilot on their heritage’s safety lane while occasionally stumbling across more experimental routes. That’s all definitely graceful but also a compromise of nostalgia and exploration. If you seek both—great. If only one of those, you’ll be left hungry by the end.

Artist – Title
Release: 10/01/2025
- Audacious
- Everydaydreamer
- The Doctor
- Hooked
- Build It Up
- Night Or Day
- Tell Me I Should Stay
- Cats
- Black Eyelashes
- Bar Lonely
- The Birds