Artwork for Simona Castricum’s Vinyl LP release of ‘Panic / Desire’, available to stream and for purchase here.
‘Panic/Desire’ is the third full length album from Melbourne electronic artist Simona Castricum — an allegory about gender nonconformity lived in the spaces between urban and digital realms.
Featuring 2020’s single ‘Supertouch’ (ft m8riarchy) and 2019’s the ‘The Half Light’, ‘Panic/Desire’ is Simona’s most sonically accomplished and diverse work. From cinematic moments of ‘GNC City’ and the title track ‘Panic/Desire’; to the anthemics of ‘Let Myself Be’, the dreamy textures of ‘Monolith’ and ‘Borderline Spaces’; to the driving darkwave of ’The Good In You’, the provocations of ‘The Present’ and the lamentations of ‘Panopticon’.
Of the album Simona says:
“‘Panic/Desire’ is the soundtrack to my experiences of the city as a gender nonconforming person; songs about how I move and navigate through the city in the night; how I find a place of belonging — somewhere between my fears and desires. ‘Panic/Desire’ is about transition, resistance, empathy, and how the city, its architecture, and its relationship to tactile and virtual worlds hold archives of emotion that influence the way I move a feel about urban space.”
It’s Simona’s most collaborative work to date; recorded by Evelyn Ida Morris, mixed by Simona and James Cecil (‘Supertouch’ and ‘The Half Light’), and features guest appearances from Raquel Solier on acoustic drums, Em Gayfer on guitar and m8riarchy on vocals. ‘Panic/Desire’ serves as the musical soundtrack to her PhD in Architecture at the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne ‘What if Safety Becomes Permanent? Architecture and the Gender Nonconforming City’.
‘Panic/Desire’ is streaming digitally from June 19 on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music and available on limited 12″ Vinyl (Pre-Order now through BandCamp) through Trans-Brunswick Express.
FAINT Agency 