A well-kept secret off of the Gold Coast in Australia is none other than darkwave act Chiffon Magnifique, who returns with another fantastic single, this time the intoxicating and dancefloor-friendly “Cyanide”.
Chiffon Magnifique is a project helmed by Jed A. Walters (Tesla Cøils, The Blackwater Fever), a musician who champions his local dark underground music scene with a passionate enthusiasm for songcraft stemming from the post-punk of the late 1970s and the DIY playfulness of early 1980s minimal wave.
The new single ‘Cyanide” is a kinetic whirl of cavernous baritone, Linndrum beats, spine-tingling bass, and mournful guitars straight from the catacombs.
The song’s tenebrous tone is set by an eerie guitar riff that scurries along the minor scale like creatures of the night, swarming around the cadaverous bass guitar and unwavering drum-machine polyrhythms, conjuring a sound reminiscent of Joy Division, Suicide, and The Damned via Phantasmagoria.
“She’s like cyanide, she’s a warhead, she rides the cumulonimbus into the land of the dead”.
“The idea for this song came from just messing around with my mother’s old nylon string guitar, while in lockdown” exclaims Jed, “…I found these sad twangy riffs and rhythms, and imagined what the bass and drums would do in my head, and the whole song was pretty much mapped out in one day. This sad-yet-frantic mood led me to pen lyrics describing conflicts that arise within a loving relationship. I guess I was thinking about how easily the people we love can change so sharply due to the stressful surroundings of our world. If we take a look around at what has happened in the past couple of years, it’s understandable that this extra pressure would inflict tension on our relationships, sometimes leading to harsh and difficult arguments in the closed-in world of lockdown. That’s what I mean by “She’s like cyanide, she’s a warhead”…sometimes the people we love need extra care to defuse that A-bomb of stress.
Recorded at Jed’s home studio, “Cyanide” utilizes a pared-down approach to production, giving the song room to breathe and shudder within the mix. “I’m usually throwing everything and the kitchen sink at my mixes” says Jed, “but Cyanide is really sparse, it kind of follows the rule of threes – only three instruments can be heard at a time – more or less. Drums, bass, guitar, and space provided by this awesome Valhalla reverb plugin that I’m really liking at the moment. The key is to make it feel like we’re in a Siberian warehouse, rather than this sweaty beach town I live in.”
CYANIDE is accompanied by a lyric video made up of monochromatic clips of Vincent Price’s 1959 public domain classic “House On Haunted Hill”. The spooky visuals provide a grand backdrop to Walters’ woeful lyricism.
Watch the lyric video for “Cyanide” below:
A follow-up to 2021’s “Abomination”, and March’s “Ice Witch”, “Cyanide” is the next step for Chiffon Magnifique, also marking the band’s expansion into a two-piece – with Lindsay Bright-Mync (of Debt Cult, Gardeners fame) on live bass guitar and synths. “It’s so exciting to have my music be given a new life onstage with Lindsay on board,” says Jed, “he learned my songs in just two weeks, and in the shows we’ve played already, he’s brought such an extra organic quality to the show”.
Find ‘Cyanide” and other songs and video from Chiffon Manifique via the streaming service of your choice here.
Chiffon Magnifique will be presenting CYANIDE, as well as an entire setlist of fresh material, in live shows:
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