Premiere: Alpha Chrome Yayo creeps along ‘Malediction Boulevard’ -

1986’s The Fly is a gruesomely buggy analysis of human suffering. The body-horror flick, starring a then 33-year-old Jeff Goldblum, destroys and seeks to rearrange what we, human beings, often fail to recognize: modern society operates as both an exalted exhibit of humanity’s complete unlocked potential and the inevitable deterioration of life and all its vibrancy. “There was something about the…story that was much more universal to me: aging and death ⏤ something all of us have to deal with,” director David Cronenberg (Scanners, Videodrome) once stated of the film’s overriding themes. It’s a gorgeously bleak patchwork of duality, reminding us all that there can’t be light without suffocating blackness.

Belfast’s synthwave scientist Alpha Chrome Yayo calls us onward to the other side, across foggy gloom to our own awakening. His new EP, Malediction Boulevard, is an electrocution of thought and unwieldy emotional grit, stitched with dark, arsenic synths and an acidic aroma. With the title cut, the mysterious man in black leather gloves scrapes the human skull clean in order for us to truly confront similar notions of beauty and ruin. “For an instrumental, ‘Malediction Boulevard’ is a track that paradoxically hinges heavily on words and meaning. A malediction is a curse ⏤ an evil utterance or oath, intended to cause harm. A word made tangible and physical,” he writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email.

The accompanying visual, premiering today, stings every one of the senses, inflaming the intestines and the bones themselves. Water trickles down from the heavens; the candle’s flame slices in the darkness; and ivory snow encompasses all. Bugs and ants and bees, oh my, tramp across the earth as steady, marching rhythms to signify the elegance that is often unseen by human eyes. The meaning is left strikingly vague, and the listener must unearth their own context, perhaps uncapping their own mental silo of the past. “This is precisely what I wanted to capture in the video for the single ⏤ the track has no audible lyrics, the only words present are those you read in the title. What’s left is the more tangible payoff, the music and nothing else,” says the producer and musician. “I love the notion of it being a sort of magic trick ⏤ you read my words (including these ones), but what you’re really receiving is the song, the effect of the spell. I guess it’s up to you to decide if it’s a blessing or a curse!”

Swarms of insects are also obvious nods to Biblical plagues as found in the book of Revelation. The power is ancient, so it’s futile to ever fight against it. “When making the record I found myself ⏤ like Jeff Goldblum ⏤ getting consumed with the idea of insect societies and how they hold a mirror to humanity,” he continues to highlight the gravity of the clip. “It’s not just pestilence and perdition, though. There’s an undercurrent of hope. The insects you see aren’t meant to be horrible or scary; they’re incredibly beautiful and intricate creatures, too. They’re complex.”

Later, a high-rise building, a treasure of architectural achievement, dissolves into dust and subsequently alludes to another richer layer to the song. “I’m obsessed with the crumbling splendor of Hollywood, typified in Billy Wilder’s noir classic, ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and explored by Kenneth Anger in his seminal expose ‘Hollywood Babylon’. That sense of grandeur is at once searingly bright and beautiful, the American dream alight in rhinestones, while also peeling at the edges, decrepit and riddled with thinly-veiled darkness.”

Alpha Chrome Yayo is a fascinating and glamorous creature of the night. His work, as demonstrated on the entirety of his new EP, embodies the complexities of living and dying, laughing and crying, fearing and embracing. “Times are strange on Malediction Boulevard, and there is plenty of strife,” he says. “It might feel like we’ve been cursed and, hell, maybe we have. But there’s staggering, gut-wrenching beauty, too, and that’s something to celebrate.”

His new Malediction Boulevard EP is now up for purchase via BandCamp.

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