Kill Your Boyfriend - Ghosts

Kill Your Boyfriend are an Italian dark-wave/noise duo consisting of Antonio Angeli and Matteo Scarpa. ‘Ghosts’ is the follow up to the duo’s ‘The King is Dead’, it delves into "quiet regrets and empty spaces", as the band put it, and that bleak imagery is deviously captured perfectly throughout the four tracks on offer here. Pulsing synths and electronic fuzz greets you from the opening track ‘Man 1’. It sounds like the start of a really bad hangover taking hold, but in the best way possible. The rest of the EP does nothing to help this gloomy sensation of desperation, ‘Man 9’ adds vocals into the nightmarish atmosphere which do nothing for the burning paranoia which grips you firmly. ‘Man 4’ seems to act as the anti-antidote in the form of the bad idea which so perfectly guides you toward a beautiful series of self-destructing decisions. It’s the equivalent of that first drink the day after a ‘big one’ that rather than putting you off, straightens you up and leads you into a dark hedonistic frenzy. It’s a gentler, but by no means less effective take on industrial music; think the more instrumental work of Nine Inch Nails or the darker moments of Bauhaus. By the time you reach the closer ‘Man 5’, you’ve either reached breaking point or have well and truly witnessed the curve of the earth and passed the point of no return and are beyond saving. But who wants to be saved anyway?