The wails of dying cicadas blast through the speakers, as the cityscape extends itself in a magnificent sprawl and its flickering lights start their dance of a million pre-midnight cinderellas. Biotech vultures sit atop the silicone abattoirs and solemnly gaze at the glitches in the information highway capillaries spurting out viruses to numb the digital ghosts of yesteryear. Deep in the core, the best of the species compete in an intertwined playground of order-within-chaos cybernetics without a defined set of rules or restrictions. A raw and unhinged metasphere where lifeblood vortices go to die. The scenery of Panther Modern’s Los Angeles 2020.

From the get-go, the haunted electronica of Panther Modern sounds like the work of a man who dismantled the atomic bomb a few seconds before the blast, as if the synthesizer gods had to purge these tunes out of his system to prevent the swollen sky from falling on our heads. While the focus of the EP is undoubtedly pointed at the dancefloor, the barrage of noise trinkets in the background induces a parallel evolution of sonic sexual mutagenesis, provoking the subconscious receptors of broken human transistors that call themselves normal.

Perfect in its minimalism, the cascading build-up of the tracks resonates against a cold vocal delivery fed on a heavy diet of static, resulting in a straitjacket-trapped explosion of catchy melody and firm arrangements bound to release the cerebral tourniquets of a dystopian moral majority. The tribal firedance continues unfazed, as the pillars of id succumb to the effects of electronic opioids, dispersed within a collection of tunes that make you stop caring about your surroundings and forget that the streets are littered with armies of creeps putting on iridescent masks and pretending that the world is taking notice.

Floating rudderless on a shockwave of tomorrow, the riveted addicts fuse themselves with the vibrations from the subterranean trenches where mutant rats reign over neon-lit sewers, bartering their pound of flesh for a shot at the driver’s seat. At the control deck, the most daring ones ensure that the echoes of the EP’s four songs ­­­­will start their afterlife the moment the needle is lifted from the groove. Affected by the age of the night, the matrix is in perpetual overload, urging us to hurry up and pose for final shots before the dawn breaks out and sets the cycle on repeat. Before Molly kicks in the door and saves the day…