There’s a strange confidence in naming your record Hell Was Boring. It suggests a shrug at apocalypse; a smirk amid smoke. And in a way, that’s exactly what Berlin artist L.F.T. delivers: a record that moves with deliberate restraint, as if every beat were placed with tweezers and a stopwatch. The tension isn’t in the explosion, but the quiet before it.
Johannes Haas (alias L.F.T., short for Love Fist Tears) has spent years orbiting the darker planets of electro and new wave. On this double album, he dials back the chaos and lets precision do the talking. The result feels like an archaeological dig through the ruins of ‘80s minimal synth: brittle rhythms, blank stares, and melodies that hover just above freezing. It’s not music that begs for attention; it stares at you until you blink first.
The production is monastic in its discipline. Drum patterns snap with mechanical certainty, carved from TR-808s and 707s; basslines hum like power lines in winter air. Everything is stripped of ornament, leaving space for silence to do its work. Recorded on a Tascam 80-8 reel-to-reel, there’s a tactile weariness to the sound – it has a sort of tape hiss throughout, sounding like dust in a forgotten factory.
Haas’s collaborators (Das Kinn, Rosaceae, Felix Kubin, Konstantin Unwohl), add faint traces of warmth, but no one overstays their welcome. Together, they build a landscape of repetition and restraint, where emotion hides in the pauses and half-tones.
The title track moves like a slow march through synthetic fog. Its groove never rushes; it simply is, looping with the patience of a clock that has seen too much time pass. Elsewhere, moments of melody surface and dissolve, recalling the minimal melancholy of early Linear Movement or the clinical allure of Martin Dupont. This track feels more like an act of distillation, a decision to leave everything that isn’t essential on the cutting room floor. There’s beauty in the distance, a kind of emotional drought that invites the listener to project their own ghosts into the space. The thrill lies in its refusal to fill the void.
Listen to Hell Was Boring below.
L.F.T. has released through Mannequin, Tresor, and Return to Disorder, but this record stands apart for its composure. It’s music for late hours and blank walls, for the listener who finds solace in repetition and quiet machinery. Hell Was Boring is patient, poised, and unblinking—proof that stillness, when handled with care, can be its own form of intensity.
Pre-order the album here.
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