Audiopile Review: Music From Memory chase recent full length debuts from Contours, Tim Koh & Sun An and Total Blue with another premier transmission, this one courtesy of Dead Sound, a duo comprised of a pair of MFM mainstays—vocalist John Moods, who last collab’d with The Zenmenn, and Young Marco, who makes up 1/3 of fourth world revisionists Gaussian Curve. Combining the best of both worlds, the adventurous album combines the alien AM gold and synthetic soul of Moods’ collab alongside The Zenmenn with Young Marco’s otherworldly groove and hazy ambient-jazz found in Gaussian Curve. Fronting them album is the tender croon of Moods, who is able to subtly shift his soft-rock approach to melt neatly into Young Marco’s delicate layering of warm synths, languid guitar lines and web of lysergic FX, flitting from vocoder’d prog-wave of album opener “Pure Blue”, on to the crystalline synth-blues of “The Illusion” before rounding off the album’s opening trilogy with the foreboding bedroom-psychedelia of “Force Of Nature”. Another vital release from Music From Memory, who are even’t done with us this year. Stay tuned for one final MFM release from Suso Sáiz and another collab via their subsidiary imprint Second Circle. 2024 is shaping up to be maybe their best yet.

Music From Memory is thrilled to introduce Dead Sound, the collaborative project of Marco Sterk (aka Young Marco) and Berlin-based pop-auteur John Moods. Both artists are no strangers to the label; Sterk forms one third of the trio Gaussian Curve, while Moods released the 2022 album ‘Hidden Gem’ with The Zenmenn.

Their collaboration was both planned and spontaneous; Sterk initially reached out in 2022 expressing his desire to work with Moods. The pair finally got together in 2024 to produce ‘Into The Void’, an album that burst into life over the course of a few creatively charged days in each other’s company.

Moods’ dream-like, emotionally charged music wears its heart on its sleeve; its very human vulnerability makes it a perfect match for Sterk’s strong sense of melody and textural sonic visions.

‘Into The Void’ carries these psychedelic traits in its DNA, but they exist layered deep amongst the shadows. Painting on a wide canvas that effortlessly skips between genres, the pair weave anything that inspires them into a truly unique tapestry; a bold attempt to touch at the beyond.

Exploring the space between perception (level of the mind) and the nature of the universe (actual level of reality) seems traditionally like an impossible task. But there’s gotta be a time and a space for the profound and this album invites the listener to go deep, letting go of concepts such as love and opening oneself up to one’s own authentic journey. This transformative force of healing is a central theme of ‘Into The Void’, a path that is lined with light and darkness in equal measure. But, as Moods says, “do not skip the darkness, let that door open and swallow you. And maybe you’ll find, it’s not as dark as you perceived at first.”