“The veil is lifted and set free…”
There are works that move softly lit, half-remembered, touched by the strange liminal hush between waking and sleep — and Mercury’s Antennae have spent the past year shaping precisely that sensation. After the release of The Reflecting Skin and their full-length Among the Black Trees, the trio closes out 2025 with a digital-only maxi-single that refracts those earlier pieces. The Veil Opaque v.2 is less a conclusion than a deep breath taken over something already trembling towards mystery.
‘The Veil Opaque v.2 arrives as a newly altered remix, clearing a path through its own fog. Cindy Coulter’s bass line presses forward with patient force, while Allen’s voice, dream-felt and unwavering, seems to step toward the listener rather than rise above anything at all. Around her, Erick r Scheid’s 12-string hollow-body guitar and E-bow move like pale heat over water, joined by added synths and updated drum programming. The result is a piece that moves in quiet arcs, each element glancing against the next in passing. It brings to mind Strange Boutique / Faith and The Muse, Autumn’s Grey Solace, and Dead Can Dance, drawing from that lineage of ethereal post-punk, ritualistic elegance, and sweeping, gothic romanticism.
Scheid’s hand becomes more spectral in Through the Veil (witchmoth mix), a full reimagining drawn from witch-house, dungeon synth, dark ambient, and trip hop. Here the track deepens, folds, and stirs. It is less a remix than a second consciousness of the song, something built from ritual pulse and soft distortion. It shows, without excess, Scheid’s habit of turning electronic textures into something devotional.
“Lyrically, the veil refers to that which covers the parts below the conscious level in each being,” says vocalist Dru Allen, “how these memories form us – and how lifting that both frees us and challenges us to evolve.” Her explanation seems to float above the release, giving shape to the slow unbinding felt in each track.
The accompanying video, co-directed by Kevin Brown, who captured the live performance at Holocene in Portland, Oregon, and by Diana Berchtold, who filmed additional footage of Allen in Switzerland, layers its images with a drifting logic. A bit psychedelic, a bit ghostly, it holds Allen in superimposed translucence, mirroring the music’s habit of standing in two worlds at once.
With this haunting track, Mercury’s Antennae offer a quiet clearing in the trees: a place where the listener can pause, hear the world settle, and feel the thin fabric between memory and presence lift by a fraction.
Watch for “The Veil Opaque V.2” below:
Two further pieces extend this sense of quiet excavation. ‘Deer Island (a far unknown mix)’ strips the album track As I Lay Hidden (Deer Island) to its acoustic bones, offering something close to a fireside murmur. O Virtus Sapientiae, the Hildegard von Bingen work Allen recorded spontaneously in a 12th-century abbey, carries the steadiness of stone. Scheid’s minimalist electronics appear like breath around stained glass…just enough to let the older melody gleam.
Listen to the maxi-single below, and order here.
Follow Mercury’s Antennae:
Or via: