ULTRA SUNN’s debut maps nine rooms under the strobe with no ornamental corridors or drywall fakery. US arrived in April 2024 on Artoffact Records and declines pyrotechnics in favor of a civic tempo. Rather than chase spectacle, the record tightens its EBM exoskeleton, pares it back, and fits it with new wiring. The name hints at glare, but its trick lies in how the Belgian duo renders care as structure—think clean outlines, lack of shading, and a momentum in the panels that parallels ligne claire. With a new album on the horizon in autumn, ULTRA SUNN will take to the Control Club stage on December 12, 2025.
Brussels supplies the grammar of US. Front 242’s logical bones show through; DAF’s muscle memory keeps the body honest. Yet Gaëlle Souflet’s synthesized architecture and Sam Hugé’s measured baritone refuse caricature. Club-capable and headphone-lucid, these mixes feel engineered for pressure: arrangements that cut through fog and chatter, basslines that keep their contour at festival scale, vocals that carry a coherent narrative without filler bloat.
“Broken Monsters” sets the temperature: a serrated bass ribbon threading a grid of hi-hats while Hugé notes, almost clinically, “Broken monsters on your wall… the biggest monster that I know makes very sure not to be seen.” “This Is Not About You” then returns the internet’s favorite accusation to civic use. “We lived enough to see the true face of our heroes… this is the end of the shit show,” he declares with its chorus drawing a chalk outline on the pavement.
“Some Ghost Could Follow” proceeds at a sodium-lamp pace. The groove escorts the haunt through the neighbourhood with no commentary. “You & Me” risks intimacy without softening the grid. Affection arrives in geological terms (“diamond dreams and emerald gaze”) while Souflet’s pads bloom, blush, and withdraw.
Elsewhere, the city itself becomes an instrument. “Lost and Found” rides shotgun through the after-hours commute—“Through the sleepless ride / looking by the Uber window… people are screaming in the cool night air.” “Shake Your Demons” carries the motto without fireworks: “It was the season to shake your demons.” Then the French turn—“Les fleurs se décolorent… je t’ai haï si fort que je te ressemble”—a bitter filament inside the mechanism where hatred folds back into ressemblance.
On “The Truth,” the baritone narrows to an oath: “I’ve found the strength to forget you, but it’s too late… you and I, we know the truth.” Short, architectural reverbs and glassy pads leave a draught in the room, so the refrain reads like a quorum. “Fall From Grace” clocks the fluorescent dawn with poise. Think Depeche Mode scrubbed of melodrama and recut for 2024. Closer “The House” refuses confetti. Its energy holds —level and durable—with one final sweep and systems check before the lights go up.
US works physically in that unfakeable way. You don’t black out inside these tracks. The monsters stay where the opener pinned them. The music draws routes around them, rehearses exits, teaches pace. When the chorus returns—as it does, again and again—it invites you to move like you mean it, then keeps moving beside you.
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