Reflections on the Music by Anomic Bond

Betrayed by the Sun

Autumn sets in once more. Music born on the threshold between summer and winter is the one I prefer. This German duo of a brother and sister closely bonding in an alienating world, has a privileged insight – so their music tells me – in this tenebrous side of the light. Cimmerian shivers roll through the beautifully innocent voice of the girl. It sounds like she feels betrayed or at least disappointed by the glare of the sun. She has chosen the gloomy side of the light retreating, of the falling leaves, a beauty slowly fading and disappearing from her world.
Innocence of the soul is kept alive through an acknowledgement of the inescapable surrender of beauty to the darkness of it all. Chopin didn’t want to hear the rain falling in his music – it was never about the rain – but I dare to disagree. The colours and shades of the sky, the clouds pouring themselves out on our little place on earth, the sun playing its game of appearance and disappearance, it is what moves the soul and where it finds itself greeted by the whole. The piano – played by Stefan Horlitz who also wrote the melody –  as a tender friend, glistening through her voice like water, tears, any form of liquid material the sky and earth are made of. A water game by Ravel or a soft sea breeze by Debussy destined to calm the heartache of the girl. Where she can find her voice again; one voice and it is strong.

The compassionate undulations of the piano keep hope alive right through to the end of the song. Its subtle play lends this dream pop the sparkle of tiny far-away stars, beacons of reverie and longing. I love this world of dusky dreaming balancing on a riverlike sound. The beauty of it could make you believe that the sun always shone in vain.
Together with the band’s name – “Anomic Bond” – the songs of this duo harbour a space of semiosis where meanings harmoniously interact with one another, alienation as its somewhat surprising starting point. The girl is at home in her language and the music. Signs of meaning in the universe, lost utopias, connect with the sense of loneliness of the individual, fazed and lost in a senseless world. Betrayed by the promise of summer.

There’s only a small collection of songs by this band. They make pop songs where life is made of the sparkle of lost dreams, lost love or aspirations. The lyrics are always clever and invite you to think and to broaden your view. In a voice of youngness that contrasts with the gloom of a timeless despair that runs through the words. Sometimes the music of a song transforms into the uncanniness of a dark science-fiction tale, albeit softened … by the moonlight on the image of an unsettling future.
Shaped by shadows of the past, this autumnal nest of songs feels like a place to shelter for a while where the siblings can hide away from the light and its unrealised promises. Where they can take shelter almost as lost children, from the heartache of love and its loneliness.
Listening, I was overwhelmed by a constant feeling of a life already lived, of a déjà-vu that creeps through the songs, the eternal fate of loss that is attached to all hope of any meaningful connection, as if indeed the sun would always shine in vain…

The light of love, only a reflection, gleaming against the dark. 
Moonlight gleaming on the waterlike sound of the piano.

Joke Roelandt, October 2023