Imagine you’re trapped inside a machine, looking for a way out. You feel a cold beat and tense rhythm, hear bleeps lurking in the background. It’s unsettling. Then, in the distance, a voice repeats the phrase you know from Dune. “Fear is the mind killer.” You see Timothée Chalamet or Kyle MacLachlan or some other Paul Atreides who lives in your head survive the box of pain. You feel relief.
That’s what it’s like to hear “Fear (is the Mind Killer),” the Optometry song, for the first time. From Lemuria, the L.A.-based duo’s sophomore album, the song is an homage to Dune as much as it is a reflection on life in the 2020s.
On Sunday night, when I was DJing at The Mermaid for Splash! I mixed together “Cherry” from Chromatics with “Drums of Death,” from FKA Twigs’ latest album, and Mareux’s songs “DTLA.” It was one of those impromptu things that I really liked and I made a mental note to keep that in mind for future sets.
The following morning, I woke up with the Dinner In America song still stuck in my head. I had to do something to get it out, so I pulled those three songs and built a set around it, opening and closing the set with two other frequent earworms. It did the trick, at least for now, and I liked it enough to post it for this month’s Beatique Mix. Also included in this set are Taleen Kali’s cover of My Bloody Valentine’s song “Cupid Come,” from her new EP, and “Bon Voyage,” from Optometry’s new album, Lemuria. Track list is below. Enjoy!
Lemuria, the sophomore album from Optometry, has the best closer I’ve heard in a long time, so we’re going to start this review at the end. “Never Coming Back” is in the vein of what’s considered post-punk right now. It has a running-for-your-life tempo (over 160 bpm for those of you who keep track of these things), a gloomy synth and a “Ceremony” sad guitar. It’s dark— really, it sounds like the cliff-hanger ending of a TV show— but also danceable and it’s become my favorite track on the album, which is out today on Palette Recordings.
Included in my top 10 albums of 2023 are (top row) Taleen Kali “Flower of Life,” Grey Factor “1979-1980 A.D.” (bottom row) Optometry “After-Image,” Decisive Pink “Ticket to Fame”
I don’t know if the annual “best of” lists are necessarily fair. There is still a virtual pile of 2023 albums on my Bandcamp wishlist and running list in my head of albums that I need to hear. There are likely new albums from bands I follow that I don’t know about because, well, you know how social media works these days. Then there are the albums and bands who aren’t even on my radar, but will be next year, or the year after that, or maybe a half-decade down the line. Still, I made a list of my top 10 albums of 2023 that include music you may have heard in my DJ sets IRL, on Mixcloud or a few of the radio appearances I’ve done this year.
