MONAD releases kaleidoscopic new EP ‘Gift’
STREAM 'Gift' EP:
https://linktr.ee/monadgift
"Ambitious psychedelia"
The Guardian
"Mesmerising"
METAL Magazine
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(15th August) Today, Monad - the shape-shifting project of Tel Aviv producer and dream-pop experimenter Eshchar Nachmany - releases his kaleidoscopic new EP 'Gift', marked by the unveiling of new song and EP closer 'Ten'.
Speaking on the release of the new EP, Monad said:
"This EP is an evolution and a step up for Monad, and in a sense a refinement of a sound I've been looking for for a long time. This is the most honest and direct Monad has ever sounded and I’m really proud of it. The collection of songs on ‘Gift’ sums up a very specific period in my life and looking back on it, it’s almost kind of a weird documentary of sorts of what was going on in my life progressively for like, 12 months."
Across its four tracks, Eshchar Nachmany maps a year of profound change, from grief’s intimate sharpness, through suspended numbness to sun-faded nostalgia.
Previously unheard EP closer 'Ten' finds Monad at his most hypnotic - a haze of phased guitars, slow-blooming synths and a steady, motorik pulse that feels like a long-lost Innerspeaker deep cut. Vocals drift in like half-remembered dreams, blurring the line between warmth and disorientation, and leaving the listener suspended in its strange, nostalgic glow.
"'Ten' is a song about hopelessness, really. Or at least about feeling hopeless and finding something to hold on to," Monad explains. "I was holding onto rhythm and melody. These were the only things I felt I could control at the time, that and that mantra of self assurance. To me this is a neat little document of those feelings - other song’s narratives on the EP alternate between dreams/fantasies and reality so it feels right to close the EP with something that feels almost documentary to me."
Lead single and EP opening song 'I See You' (featuring London vocalist Ariel Pedatzur), was written in the days following his partner’s cancer diagnosis. Built on layers of palpitating electronics, otherworldly echoes and shoegazey guitars, it lingers in the fragile space between knowing you’re about to lose something and still holding onto it.
'UDB' drifts into emotional stasis - a swirl of analog synths, vapor-trail percussion and vocals washed in reverb, evoking the sensation of watching your life from behind glass. “I was feeling like I was watching what was going on in my life on some distant screen,” he explains.
By contrast, '1976' offers a warm-blooded embrace of classic 70s AM radio pop, inspired by Big Star, Wings and Seals & Crofts. Written during a workshop led by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, it channels the bittersweet ache of youth on the brink of change - one last endless summer before everything shifts.
Monad’s sound is a lush collision of 60s jangle pop, effervescent dream-pop, 90s shoegaze, 70s AM radio and 00s electronica, melted together into what he describes as “the sound of machines going wrong at the right time.” His influences span Ennio Morricone’s widescreen melancholy, Broadcast’s haunted futurism, Todd Rundgren’s sonic adventurism, The Flaming Lips’ warped psychedelia, and the lo-fi sci-fi of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Recorded in the shadowy sanctuary of his self-built studio, the 'Gift' EP is part dream diary, part sonic documentary. Monad's music resists the binary of analog vs digital - instead finding feeling in circuitry and makes synthetic sounds breathe.
In recent years, Monad has become a quietly magnetic presence in the global underground, with standout appearances at Liverpool Sound City and Dot to Dot Bristol in the UK plus praise and support from tastemakers like The Guardian, CLASH Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, METAL Magazine, Ones To Watch along with regular airplay on stations including KEXP, NTS, Radio X and KCRW.
Monad’s new EP 'Gift' is out now, released 15th August. Monad is donating all proceeds of purchases of the 'Gift' EP on bandcamp to Standing Together - a joint Jewish-Palestinian movement fighting for peace, equality and social justice in Israel-Palestine.
'Gift' - EP artwork and track list
1. I See You (feat. Ariel Pedatzur)
2. UDB
3. 1976
4. Ten
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Instagram: @monadmusic
YouTube: @Monadmusic
