A.M. Boys arrive like a low tide at midnight: measured, magnetic, and murmuring with intent. Formed in the cracked glow of a New York evening in 2014, when Louis Sherman (Locust) introduced Chris Moore and John Blonde at an Aphex Twin listening party, the duo sparked with silent understanding. By 2018, they had songs…spare but spirited, sleek yet swollen with feeling…and shared a stage with Martin Rev after sending one spectral track. That piece, Distance Decay, would name their debut.
Blonde, of Muscle Club and House of Blondes repute, brings breath and blur: his lyrics laced with longing, his voice rising like steam from subway grates. Moore, a shapeshifter behind the board known for mixing and mutating records by TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Scarlett Johansson & David Bowie, Foals, and OSEES, anchors the air with rhythm, synth, and space echo. Together, they conjure a communion between post-punk precision and present-tense pulse. There’s restraint here, yes—but it’s the kind that glows. A hush before the hymn, a pause before the plunge, a duo making distance feel like something you could hold.
The first light from their upcoming album Present Phase arrives with Ocean Ocean, a slow, salt-stung swell that rises like breath on a warm pane. It drifts, doesn’t dash; sways instead of sprints. Melody moves like muscle memory, with lyrics smoothed and worn like sea glass, shaped by time and tide. There’s a hush beneath the hook, a hush that hums. Think Super Furry Animals staring out at the surf, Eels in exile, Badly Drawn Boy with sand in his shoes. It’s a beach without bodies, a morning without noise; just the stretch of horizon and the soft ache of air. A memory of a memory, soaked in sun and steeped in stillness.
“I was staying in California for a few weeks and whenever I’m out there the landscape always knocks me out,” Blonde recalls. “I grew up in New York City, so any place with a horizontal horizon is exotic. One afternoon I was alone and decided to just sit and watch surfers on Surfrider Beach in Malibu for an hour. I was hypnotized by them and the waves and the freedom of it all. I got back to my room that evening and wrote the lyrics for Ocean Ocean.“
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Present Phase is a slow-bloomed reckoning with the tug between pulse and play, structure and spill. This isn’t a quarrel between Blonde and Moore, but a quiet storm within their shared sensibility: the pull of pristine pop against the lure of loose-form exploration. It’s a delicate dance, and they waltz it well.
“It only took me a few hours to put a demo together once I was back at Glowmatic,” says Blonde. “The key for me was to try to recreate the feeling of the rolling waves, and I believe I was able to do that at the very top of the song. What’s great about being in a band is that you can share your song with someone and connect, in a beautiful and creative way, over what is essentially a private moment. I may have been in a cold basement in New York but the sounds brought me back to Surfrider Beach and the endless possibilities of those waves.”
Ocean Ocean is out now. Listen to the track below. Present Phase is due for release on May 16th. Pre-save the album here.
A.M. Boys spoke with Post-Punk.com about the changes in their overall sound, their creative process, and collaborative strategy:
How does the sound of “Ocean Ocean” fit into the overall feel of Present Phase compared to your debut album, Distance Decay?
JB: Ocean Ocean is a true expansion of what we began with the first album. I think all the experimentation we do somehow fed naturally into this more classic pop song structure. So, while it has a centered melody and groove, it also has crucial elements that were borne from playing more noise-oriented music. When I wrote it there was a sense of freedom that came from being more acquainted with the instruments we started using on the first album. I think as a duo playing the song, that freedom is still felt. On Distance Decay we wanted to keep the arrangements minimal so that it was essentially our live set at the time. With the new album we began layering sounds, so Ocean Ocean has a decidedly more cinematic vibe.
What does the title Present Phase signify for you both as artists, and how does it reflect the creative process behind the new album?
JB: It’s simply a statement of where Chris and I are at now, in 2025, as friends and as a creative team. But it also refers to the song We’ll See The Moon Again that closes the album, where the lyrics reference the phases of the moon and a relationship.
Chris, as the producer, how do you collaborate with John in terms of creating the overall atmosphere and vibe for tracks like “Ocean Ocean”?
CM: John and I share the work of songwriting and producing equally, although I do most of the recording and all of the final mixing. Our process is different on a song-by-song basis. On Ocean Ocean and some of the other vocal songs, John made a demo of the track first, and then we both worked to improve it, edit it, and add additional layers to it. But for songs like Pulsing Crystal and Frictional, we wrote the songs together, each performing a live take and then stepping back to let the other add another layer, and then deciding together which elements were strong enough to make the final cut.
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