Processor brain, is it the same?
Are you in pain? Who’s to say?
When it’s time to see the light
Live your life twice or thrice
Western civilization has had a fair run, although the last few seasons have been rather disappointing. The machines are getting smarter, the people are getting stupider, and the future increasingly resembles a low-budget science fiction film directed by megalomaniacs with a grudge against humanity. Naturally, the appropriate response is to find a nightclub, consume something inadvisable, and dance until the authorities announce the end of the world. If the apocalypse requires a soundtrack, somebody ought to put Musique Machine in charge of the entertainment.
Behind the controls stands Phoenix producer and DJ Ms. Bea Bohannon, whose musical education seems to have involved – and invoked – extensive exposure to the more disreputable pleasures of 1980s gay nightclubs. Her new EP, Scream Queen, is a five-track exercise in electronic excess, technological paranoia, and the questionable wisdom of trusting machines with our emotional well-being. Given humanity’s recent performance, the machines might have a legitimate complaint.
Following numerous independent singles and a debut EP released between 2023 and 2025, Bohannon has joined 2999Rec, bringing along an arsenal of Yamaha DX7s, Moog machinery, and enough electronic apparatus to make a Kraftwerk roadie consider early retirement. Her musical vocabulary borrows from Italo disco, electroclash, darkwave, and avant-funk, with the theatrical instincts of Soft Cell and the dance-floor sensibilities of Nuovo Testamento.
Living Online opens with a buzzy backbeat, peculiar electronic bloops, and vocals resembling a sentient AI trapped inside a malfunctioning computer. House music meets Kraftwerk in a disturbing little meditation on digital immortality, artificial intelligence, and humanity’s gradual transformation into obedient insect drones. The prospect of living forever inside a processor sounds increasingly unpleasant, particularly when your eternal existence involves answering emails.
Use Yr Brain continues the technological interrogation with a motorik rhythm and vocoder vocals recalling Daft Punk and Kraftwerk. Bohannon considers the eternal conflict between reason and emotion, encouraging independent thought while cataloguing the spectacular stupidity of human behavior. Apparently, using one’s brain remains a controversial proposition. Sentimental Materialism introduces a heavier industrial backbeat beneath expansive, cinematic synthesizers. Its resemblance to Zombie Nation’s Kernkraft 400 comes with an additional serving of existential dread, suggesting the apocalypse has acquired a respectable nightclub residency.
The title track finds Bohannon stalking the corridors of exploitation cinema, invoking Ms. 45, Dressed to Kill, Identikit, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Survival becomes a grotesque game of endurance, with each new morning offering another opportunity to outrun society’s considerable appetite for cruelty.
“Every day feels a bit like a psychological slasher movie — I find myself on the verge of letting out a blood curdling shriek,” says Bohannon. “Society is on the edge of total collapse, and an over-reliance on technology looms as the next wave of brain rot. As a trans woman in this unstable environment, I often feel a bit like the archetypal final girl. It often feels like there is an imminent threat chasing me into the dawn of a new day. Collectively, we need to run, we need to get creative, we need to survive with less. When I eventually make my getaway — I will laugh hysterically and I will scream into the void. I am a psychotic and neurotic woman, and this track references a classic films on the subject…In a way, this is my love letter to every woman who has been labeled the villain, but is actually victimized by society at large.”
Bohannon’s identification with cinema’s persecuted women gives the song an uncomfortable urgency beneath its theatrical presentation. The final girl, traditionally condemned to spend ninety minutes fleeing murderous maniacs, becomes a fitting figure for navigating an increasingly hostile society. At least horror movies usually provide the courtesy of rolling credits. For Bohannon, the final-girl archetype carries particular significance as a trans woman confronting social hostility and technological deterioration. It gives the song an uncomfortable urgency beneath its theatrical presentation.
Hypnotized concludes the proceedings with robotic vocal manipulations, a considerably funkier backbeat, and the electronic eccentricities of Cabaret Voltaire. Romantic obsession becomes another exercise in voluntary submission, complete with hypnosis, physical desire, and the familiar human enthusiasm for surrendering good judgement.
Listen to Scream Queen below and order the EP here.
Throughout Scream Queen, Bohannon treats the dance floor as civilization’s emergency exit. The machines keep working, humanity keeps misbehaving, and somewhere in Phoenix, a woman is laughing at the approaching disaster while adjusting the synthesizers. Frankly, somebody ought to check whether she’s holding the keys to the bunker.
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