The Wants - Bastard (Vinyl)

Electronic post-punk trio The Wants return with their sophomore album Bastard, set for release June 13th. Evolving far beyond their acclaimed 2020 debut Container, the Brooklyn-based trio craft a sound that defies easy categorisation—a self-styled "No Wave / No Pop techno punk" that feels both familiar and startlingly new.

Following a successful run of sold-out UK and EU shows for 'Container,' The Wants’ Madison Velding-VanDam and Jason Gates welcomed synth virtuoso Yasmeen Night (of NightNight) in 2021. Night's classical training and electronic wizardry have helped transform The Wants' sonic architecture into something more dangerous and sublime, where industrial rhythms collide with spectral melodies and raw punk energy dissolves into waves of digital distortion.
Drawing from a deep well of influences across decades and genres, The Wants forge an unlikely alliance of sounds that feels both radical and inevitable. Velding-VanDam channels both Nine Inch Nails’ raw power and Roy Orbison's romance, while Gates draws intensity from Bauhaus, Killing Joke, and experimental techno. Night's sound bridges inspiration from industrial and a nocturnal trip-hop atmosphere of Massive Attack. The result sits in its own category—too raw to be pure electronic music, too mechanised to be straight rock—drawing favorable comparisons to early Public Image Ltd. and contemporaries like Model/Actriz while remaining distinctly their own beast.
Bastard was deeply influenced by personal tragedy. Shortly after Christmas 2019, Velding-VanDam received news that his father had been found dead in his Michigan trailer, having been deceased for eight days. The aftermath of this discovery—finding hoarded belongings, towers of empty liquor bottles, oxycodone containers, and grime-covered childhood photos—became the emotional backdrop for the album's creation.

"Bastard, both as an album and an experience, is an emotional purge—a meditation on isolation and loss," explains Velding-VanDam. “The story of my father’s life and death loomed large as a backdrop of the writing process. I explored the darkest periods of my life, and the reality that we can all spiral into our own personal voids, unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the decay until it’s too late”

The recording process was an exercise in controlled chaos, capturing the band's raw live cohesion while embracing digital manipulation. "We recorded playing live together in the same room," Gates explains. "The feel we were trying to capture is live energy, often nervous energy, against a clocked pulse." Night's atmospheric interventions add layers of uncanny texture, creating what she describes as "sounds that hover between recognition and confusion... drawing from Eastern melodies and unconventional harmonies."
The album pulses with the tension between Velding-VanDam's midwestern roots and his New York City existence, exploring disconnection in an age of endless connection. This duality manifests in the music itself—organic instruments wrestle with electronic ghosts, while traditional song structures are dismantled and reassembled into strange new forms.

Since emerging in 2017, The Wants have carved out their own niche in experimental music's outer reaches. Their debut Container earned critical acclaim and packed venues across the UK and EU before the pandemic forced them off the road. With Bastard, they've created something even more ambitious—a record that transforms personal demons into universal catharsis, and pushes the boundaries of what electronic post-punk can be.

Bastard is out June 13th via STTT