Budapest’s Cawatana has lived several lives. Formed in 1999, reborn in 2018 with a strict diet of analogue synthesizers, drum machines, and sequencers, the group severed ties with their software past and acoustic adornments. This latest incarnation – minimal, brutalist, and eerily evocative of Cold War concrete, feels engineered for abandoned relay stations and dimly humming archives.
We Live Silently revisits the opening track from their 2010 mini album Advocation For Privileges. Then, it was a skeletal acoustic post-punk piece. Now, it’s a work carved from analogue voltage, dense with monochrome synth pads, clipped bass sequences, metallic percussion, and vocoder vocals that sound like intercepted transmissions. The lyrics speak in stark terms of detachment and erosion, where absence becomes order, blindness spreads, and menace simmers quietly under the surface.
“The new version shows the current state in the current chapter… the analogue synth and drum machine-based electronic darkwave/coldwave/minimal wave approach, says the artist.
The video, directed by Krisztina (known for her work with Cold Contrast), plays like a time capsule unearthed in a disused terminal. Cawatana’s figure drifts through Budapest’s tunnels in a stark black outfit, as if traversing the catacombs of obsolete technology. Flickers of old computers, floppy discs, cathode monitors, and early circuitry create a montage that feels both documentary and requiem. The setting includes the very place that sparked the song’s lyrics 15 years ago, grounding the abstraction in a specific memory.
“I never wanted to be in a video, but sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone when circumstances dictate,” he reflects. “I didn’t regret it. It was filmed in various locations in Budapest, Hungary, including the place that inspired the lyrics of the song fifteen years ago.”
Watch the video for “We Live Silently” below:
Comparable to Agent Side Grinder, Buzz Kull, Linea Aspera, and Sydney Valette, Cawatana’s sound is as precise as it is stark. Their history spans international releases and festival stages like Wave Gotik Treffen, yet We Live Silently feels like a quiet reassertion, a transmission sent from deep within the machinery, reminding us that silence can still hum with intent.
Listen to We Live Silently below and order Beyond The Glory here.
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