Our kiss tonight, could save or end your life.
Picture this: it’s 1986, a weekend strung between Manhattan’s Danceteria—that cathedral of chaos where punks, drag queens, and synth freaks preached the gospel of excess—and, decades later, Bushwick’s Bossa Nova Civic Club, where their descendants still dance through the fog. Liaisons Dangereuses is bleeding into Anne Clark’s “Our Darkness,” and the crowd is split between leather, lace, and neon. Somewhere between the coldwave cabal and the freestyle fever dream—that’s where Bustié would’ve belonged.
Angelika Padilla (aka Pogo Pope) of Bustié calls this concoction of 80s Freestyle, Electro, UK punk, and Janet Jackson via “Rhythm Nation 1814,” — “Anarcho Body Music.” And Padilla’s mission is as physical as it is political—dancefloor as direct action, synths as subversion. Joined by Esmé and Harry Figueroa, and featuring collaborations with Heather Galipo (CrowJane, Egrets on Ergot), Romy Hoffman (Agender, ROMY), Rosa Castillo, and Gina Kuhn (More Ephemerol), the EP is a manifesto wrapped in sequins and sweat.
The title track “Cruel Intentions” erupts with metallic bass synths and bongo-pad percussion that pulse like they’ve been smuggled from a lost underground acetate. Padilla’s voice cuts through the machinery—part command, part confession—channeling Anne Clark and Soma Holiday in equal measure. It’s a collision of minimal wave, dark disco, and synthpop that feels ritualistic: a hymn to desire and danger where each chorus threatens redemption or ruin. “Our kiss tonight could save or end your life,” Padilla warns, and you believe her.
A slower burn with dirge-weight basslines and icy string pads, “Icon” moves with liturgical grace. The drum programming marches with deliberate intensity, while Padilla’s lyrics read like devotional verse: blood oaths, divine servitude, the sacred and profane intertwined. It’s the sound of a nightclub congregation kneeling to the beat—half prayer, half possession.
“Wilt” wastes no time. Rippling bass synths and snare hits launch Padilla into a cold fury—detached at first, then flaring into operatic heartbreak. “Wilt like roses on the grave of our love,” she intones, the melody unraveling like smoke. It’s the EP’s cathartic centerpiece, balancing romance and rage, the funereal and the danceable.
Across its three tracks, Cruel Intentions is a declaration: queer, confrontational, and completely dance-driven. Bustié finds the perfect friction point between coldwave austerity and freestyle shimmer, making room for both heartbreak and resistance. You can file it beside Beta Evers, Animal Bodies, or Hard Corps, but it’s better to file it under its own invention—Anarcho Body Music. This is music that moves, provokes, and reclaims.
Listen to the EP below, and order here
Bustié will celebrate the release of Cruel Intentions with Ghost Cop and More Ephemerol (LA) at Trans-Pecos, Ridgewood, Queens — Sunday, October 26 · Doors 7 PM.
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