At this point in the collapsing American experiment, everything feels overheated and under-explained. Politics has become grotesque and cruel performance art; outrage loops endlessly while certainty dissolves. The United States talks in absolutes yet lives in anxiety, toggling between spectacle and exhaustion. In moments like this, music remembers an old function: translation. So Close, So Far understands the era as a condition of motion: restless bodies, unsettled minds – and answers with music that moves forward even as it sifts through the detritus. The Mystic Underground turns unease into velocity, folding civic confusion into club-ready forms where emotion is neither hidden nor sentimentalized.
The New York City duo (singer/lyricist Vladimir Valette and keyboardist/producer Benedetto Socci) pack a punch with So Close, So Far. The record works like a late-night broadcast from a city starved for a guiding light. Socci’s bright, often effervescent synth lines cut through the fog; Valette’s emotional vocals carry a wounded clarity. This is music built for rooms where strangers recognize themselves in the same refrain.
Leading the way is the first single, Darkness Hides At Dawn, a meditation on longing, resilience, and the fleeting comfort found in the glow of the dance floor. Equal parts brooding and euphoric, it exemplifies the band’s ability to blur the line between heartbreak and motion, capturing moments of quiet despair and sudden release with an unrelenting pulse. The track understands the night as a temporary truce; an agreement to feel together before daylight resumes its harsh interrogations.
Sonically, the rest of the album draws from the sleek intelligence of Depeche Mode, the melodic confidence of Erasure and INXS, and the urbane poise of Pet Shop Boys. Beneath the surface, the words carry heavier weather: the suspicion and urgency associated with Killing Joke, the yearning unease of The Chameleons, the observational bite of The Fall and Fad Gadget. Dance music with a conscience; pop that knows the price of attention. The sounds run the gamut from ballad to four-on-the-floor disco, to early 90s EBM. Lord knows we could use a little club euphoria during these dark days.
“This is a record we feel very passionate about,” says Valette. “A collection of songs that truly cut to the heart of what we are about as a band and how the world has shaped us both collectively and individually. It’s a call to arms to those who cherish life with an unquenchable thirst for romance as a respite from the desolation and tumult of the everyday.”
So Close, So Far is out now via Re:Mission Entertainment. Listen below and order here.
In the Mystic Underground’s own words, their work is “life… set to a dance beat.” So Close, So Far makes that philosophy audible. It suggests that survival sometimes arrives through movement, through shared volume, through a song that understands the chaos outside and still insists on connection inside the room. For those naysayers lamenting that “there’s no good political music out there,” time to eat your words and your hats.
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