Augustus Muller, one half of Massachusetts electronic duo Boy Harsher, releases two original scores through own label Nude Club Records on April 10. The films, Orgone Theory and Hydra, are Muller’s first foray into scoring. Both films were produced by UK based collective Four Chambers.

Four Chambers, or A Four Chambered Heart, produces adult material that focuses on DIY practices and non-traditional bodies and narratives. Four Chambers is self-described by creator Vex Ashley as “deliberately ambiguous, rejecting labels for both (the) films and performers, existing in-between genres of both art and pornography and dismissing the need for a definition of either.”

After a successful collaboration between Boy Harsher and Four Chambers, with the film Archetype, Vex sought a direct collaboration between Muller. Hydra is a short, sci-fi experience studying invasion and consumption. Muller’s score delves into the film’s dystopian attitude, utilising eerie industrial tones and wet synthesisers.

The second short, Orgone Theory, takes a more dogmatic approach: sexual scenarios confined within a metal box simulating the Wilhelm Reich’s orgone accumulator. In Orgone, Muller embraces more of a rhythmic preposition, referencing the film’s dynamic subject matter and alluding early work by Patrick Crowley.

Boy Harsher live dates:

28/05 Belfast, IE - Ulster Sports Club

29/05 Dublin, IE - The Button Factory

30/05 Galway, IE - Roisín Dubh

Hot on the heels of their latest single ‘Witching Hour’, Montreal four-piece Tops have shared a new song and video from their forthcoming album I Feel Alive, which is set for release on April 3 via Musique Tops. ‘Colder & Closer’ is a shimmering, lean pop production with lyrical meditations on the social isolation that often plagues casual intimacy. The Mashie Alam-directed visual artfully represents this by following singer Jane Penny through an alternating lens of thermal and normal vision.

Speaking on the video, Alam says: "Jane had this really amazing vision where she hoped to convey the feeling of being immensely close to someone. The choice of using thermal footage was made because we wanted to see, feel, and immerse ourselves into the varying temperatures of the body as it heats up, cools down, responds to touch, and feels alone. We created a movement composition that travels between a live action world and a thermal world! The idea was to visually explore the dynamic of being far (in the live action world) and being close (in the thermal world)! Eventually the juxtaposing jumps between the two worlds merge into an immersive thermal universe to evoke a climactic sense of closeness from where there is no return."

I Feel Alive is Tops fourth full-length, following 2017's Sugar At The Gate and follows singles ‘Echo of Dawn’ and ‘Seven Minutes’ from last year. Their trademark sound of beguiling melodies over soft-rock grooves, with touches of '80s sophisti-pop and a contemporary experimental palette is intact, but bolder and more expansive. The songs manage to be both immediately catchy and deceptively deep, with Penny's literary lyrics adding an extra dimension to the pure pop hooks. Satisfying yet far from predictable, this is a record to be savoured, revealing itself slowly, gaining power and poignancy with each listen.

Beneath the soaring melodies and crisp production, I Feel Alive balances the giddiness of a new relationship with the agony of leaving old things behind. It's an introspective record that you can dance to, music that hits in an immediate rush but sticks around, lingering like the memory of a perfect doomed love affair-both the joy and the pain, until it becomes a part of your life forever.

Upcoming Tour Dates:

May 18 - Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin

May 19 - Nottingham, UK @ Bodega

May 20 - Dublin, Ireland @ Whelan's

May 21 - Glasgow, UK @ Stereo

May 22 - Manchester, UK @ YES

May 23 - London, UK @ All Points East Festival

May 24 - Bristol, UK @ The Louisiana

May 25 - Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds