Low Munroe is a post-punk/gothic project based in Naarm/Melbourne, and Mark Sergi (vocals, keys, guitar) is the man in the creative darkwave hot seat. The newest single has been released in June, called “Desire Limbs.”
Photo by Jacinta De Agrela
The rhythm section undulates and throbs, as the heartbeat becomes more rapid. The guitar strips you bare in comparison to the warmth of Sergi’s vocals, which implore to be passionately wrapped up and removed from the present.
The cadence and attitude is stark reminder of a younger Nick Cave, but the music itself hails from the British post-punk scene, with the understated drum machine and angular guitars. The tone overall is charged with eroticism and longing from the shadows, with Low Munroe sculpting a dark promise for your ears in the form of “Desire Limbs.”
Some albums are capsules of the past and travels that could be the stories for many of us in our younger years. When listening to Skateboarding to Concrete Creek, an experimental instrumental album by Puncture Kit, delivers those warm feelings of childhood Summers and wonderment of the general world, as we look back. Dave Osbourne is an ex-pat Aussie now found in the United Kingdom.
The low, warm tone launches, fading in and out like memory in “Brown Shorts and Berries,” where you can almost hear the cicadas chirping in the background. The drums are wavering between rhythmic and arrhythmic, while a guitar drones, cradling those beats.
Welcome to the world of hijacked sleep in the psychedelic “3am Diary.” The male orator explains that is not your body betraying you by withholding sleep, but rather spiritual shenanigans. It is like entering the Twilight Zone as the echoing last word fades into the growing swell of guitar and the drums grow in strength, becoming a maelstrom of agrypnia causing noise and the voice continues, as if trying to hypnotise.
I am not sure what it is about the track “Concrete Creek,” but some of the drumming reminds me of sun glinting off glass and sandstone. The simplistic key notes are repeated over and over, almost childish in opposition to the far more darker undercurrent of electronics.
Here is the disclaimer…. a skateboard was murdered in the creation of this album. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made to the gods of music, and let’s face it… who doesn’t like a good sacrifice?! Skateboarding To Concrete Creek is kind of a study into using drums, guitar and electronics in experimental ways, not only to extract different textures, but also using the music to paint scenes that can effect you viscerally. Puncture Kit has imbued Skateboarding To Concrete Creek with humour, warmth and possibly visions of another life lived, and that takes a lot of talent.
Many know of German based gothic rockers Aeon Sable, and original member Nino Sable, has a solo post-punk project called Melanculia. It has been eight years between albums for Melanculia, but 2026 has brought into fruition the new full length release called Post Mortem, out on noot moon records.
Full length is not a lie. Post Mortem is fourteen tracks long and goes for almost exactly one hour. The single is the melancholic “Sunboat Ascension,” with what sounds like a Hammond organ, bringing you into intimate utterances of devotion. It is almost like this is another existence we are privy in seeing, thrown back thousands of years, when the Egyptians are at the peak of their ancient civilization. It slowly unwinds with longing, only heightened by Sable’s vocals.
The album has proclamations of desperate and deeply absolute states of love, and none is better than “The Healer.” 80s inspired synths that could be at home in a fantasy inspired movie, coupled with lyrics that speak of dancing under the midnight sun, unicorn blood and being the fire that burns for another, are enough to curl your toes with the ideal of being the focal point of adoration.
Special mention goes to the seriously heart squeezing “We Are Only Human,” a slow dance, putting the emphasis on how the race of men are frail creatures, who have not been long on this planet. The clarinet solo by Benno Schlicht, just tops off the track, causing goosebumps.
This album is awash with magical energy and it plumbs the depths of mysticism. The references to the cards of the tarot are hard to miss with titles such as “The Healer” and “The Tower,” amalgamated with tendrils of those ephemeral things in life, like relationships, the attrition that comes with time, as well as the many shades and shapes love. The album is drenched in neo-folk, with hints in the guitars and sentiment of The Cure’s Disintegration era, and the electronic darkness of Gary Numan, all slowly stirred into melancholic and romantic dissections of life. This is the Post Mortem, looking for connection in this universe, by Melanculia.
Onyx Music Reviews 