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Sunset Skull

by ASSASSUN

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      €7 EUR  or more

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Contains:

    -Sunset Skull on CD pressed by Monotype Pressings
    -4 art cards including all lyrics
    -20-page art book with additional art not included anywhere else (limited to 20 copies)

    Includes unlimited streaming of Sunset Skull via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    5 remaining

      €14 EUR or more 

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes four inlays with lyrics and artwork

    Pressed by Monotype Pressing

    Includes unlimited streaming of Sunset Skull via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days

      €10 EUR or more 

     

  • Cassette + Digital Album

    Limited to 15 copies on sky blue cassette
    Hand-painted element by the artist
    Includes lyrics

    Includes unlimited streaming of Sunset Skull via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 4 days
    edition of 15  4 remaining

      €7.50 EUR or more 

     

  • Limited edition box set with art book & signature, handnumbered
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Limited to 13 copies

    Box set includes:

    -Unique wooden graffiti box
    -Sunset Skull on CD pressed by Monotype Pressings
    -20-page art book with additional art not featured in the CD and tape artwork
    -Handnumbered certificate (folded) with artist's signature

    Includes unlimited streaming of Sunset Skull via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
2.
Winter Is 03:37
3.
4.
Over Again 03:34
5.
Your Scheme? 02:50
6.
7.
Janine 03:15
8.
9.
10.
11.

about

PRESS

"Raw edges lurk beneath the lustrous surface sheen of this hard-hitting electro-punk LP from Assassun." - Bandcamp (USA)

"ASSASSUN, obviously, is happily busy developing something new [...] sometimes giving free rein to attacks of insane sequences. [...] A surprisingly strong identity despite the many activities carried out by his maker. [...] A convincing album. [...] We let ourselves be carried away, in a delicious letting go [...] It is in constant deviance, by sticking above all to his fertile and offbeat imagination, that Donat achieves his best efforts." - Muzzart (FRA)

"Brilliant stuff [...] ASSASSUN has Donat in a kind of moody EDM mode. Part frenetic electronic, part trench coat-wearing romantic, and all in-your-face post-punk attitude. It’s like Gang Of Four, The Fall, and Wire from the 70s took a time machine to 1985 and discovered a drum machine together. It’s typically brilliant Alexander Donat. ["Devours Itself" is] a jagged stab of electro post-punk. Touches of dark wave permeates “Devours Itself” as its electro stabs open the track. But then Donat comes in with a barking vocal [...] Touches of Mark E Smith and Gang of Four’s Jon King come through brilliantly, while musically we’re treated to touches of early 80s hard electro like Killing Joke and Love and Rockets. While this is definitely a new direction for Alexander Donat, this is the work of an artist with a firm grasp of who he is." - Complex Distractions (USA)

"A class of its own! This musical caterpillar never stops eating its way through the music world in an original way which can only be praised in times of many well-trodden paths. Compared to his ["The World I Will Leave" EP], he has gone a bit with the IDM direction. That makes the music even more exciting and adventurous." - De Subjectivisten (NL)

"Dark music for intelligent people, or vice versa. The post post-punk is dressed in a new, dark and electronic guise [...] mixed with dark synthwave without completely merging it [...] even punk and the psychedelia of synthwave can be found here. [...] Music for players who can and must listen, because the musical performance of ASSASSUN is intelligent and dark, pulsating and intense, it's almost brilliant." - SaitenKult (GER)

"9/10 - His deep voice is partly reminiscent of a dark crooner version of Dave Gahan. "Sunset Skull" delivers apocalyptic soundscapes for the end of the world with rigorous percussion and noisy industrial elements. [...] The sinister rhythms is as punishing as the emotions and the coldness itself. [...] Alexander Leonard Donat doesn't lecture the darkness, he rather draws his lessons and the essence from it." - Ox Fanzine (GER)

"8/10 - Assassun is an electronic project with true potential. [...] Donat is not only a prolific artist but also a true creative mind. I like the raw, icy sound treatments while other tones remind me a bit of the good-old Theremin. Alexander Donat also is a talented vocalist who performs in a passionate way. There are multiple attention grabbers at this work but I especially want to mention “Over Again”. “Your Scheme?” is another noticeable cut with some Fad Gadget elements on top." - Side-Line Magazine (BEL)

"A great way to experience new music while honoring the past. [It] has this overall haunted feeling about it which takes it to another level. On one hand, you can hear a song and it can remind you of a different artist or a specific song. But then there is this other quality to it that makes it stand out and has it as an ASSASSUN song" - Raised By Cassettes (USA)

"Unleashes gnarly synthesizers and demanding beats on the listeners. The songs have the immediacy of a live recording. Listen to "Your Scheme?": Only the frenetically cheering and clapping spectators in the background are missing. The superficially imperfect, slightly grainy-looking recordings are the precisely placed special effect that gives the album the necessary dynamics. If you listen to it for the first time and without further information, you would not place "Sunset Skull" in the year 2022, rather at least 35 years ago." - Unter.Ton (GER)

"Like previous works by Alexander Donat, a box full of surprises: every song takes you through a myriad of different paths, most of them unexplored before. Getting bored is not an option here." - El Garaje De Frank (SPA)

"Alexander manages to surprise us and once again gives us that sui generis style [...] confirming himself as an artist to follow in his every move. Alexander exquisitely shapes vintage electronics that exploit dark hues and post-punk tensions as well as industrial and proto-EBM nuances, in an illuminated system from the vocal histrionics of the Berlin mastermind. [...] a work that once more highlights the characteristic inspiration of its creator." - Darkroom Magazine (ITA)

"You need it in your life and on your boogie box now. [...] "dark brooding menace [...] bitter twisted storm of electro weirdness [...] in the centre of the blizzard [...] the oddest 80's throwback [...] something rather unsettling and fraught with existential danger [...] cartoon synths, otherworldly soundscapes [...] nose bleed techno meets low fi synthwave [...] the terror of everyday life in the 21st century and all that entails [...] a mid-80's sci fi goth soundtrack to despair" - Whisperin and Hollerin (UK)

"Synthesizer. Beautiful, evolving synthesizer. Synth that propels, that scrambles, that develops. It expands and contracts. Highly danceable, hummable, lovable. A barking, matter-of-fact vocal. On type and on beat. An excellent syntheticdance creation." - ISSUES Magazine (USA)

"The new ASSASSUN side project finds Donat taking up a snarkier tone and a more synth-forward sound. The Sunset Skull record ends up somewhere between the clinical austerity of classic European minimal wave and the yobbish mania of stateside synthpunk." - I Die: You Die (CAN)

"Sinister aesthetics, and so good. [...] He paves his own lo-fi and retro path with this daring, experimental album, in which so many shades from the dark scene come together in Alexander Leonard Donat's highly identifiable ASSASSUN sound. Vintage-electro, post punk, industrial and EBM [...] its own synth punk sound. [...] Architectural skills in song construction!" - Luminous Dash (BEL)

"With Alexander’s sinister and gloomy voice, the listener is taken on a journey through a dark human mind, where changing the pace and the right amount of justified aggression swings the plate between confusion, sadness and pain." - Radio Študent 89,3 MHz (SI)

"Excellent" - Eardrum Buzz (USA)

"Completely novel terrain, even for [Donat]. Discordant, less sung than flung into existence and stuck hanging on the aether as a crooked ornament, ‘The World I Will Leave’ hits differently than anything else.
Donat hammers a harsh sound here, and as he shouts his universe alive [...] The distortion accompanying each melodic theme echoes the plodding resistance of human nature as it scrambles to make sense of such spiritual states – there is a confusion and deep hurt buried deep beneath the seething, tucked in the folds of every song’s cracked heart. What is fascinating about Donat’s projects is that they are always unexpected journeys through the darker fragments of the human mind; he is adept at questing through the most difficult of unconscious states without feeling the need to point out that he’s doing it. [...] Perhaps a new genre should emerge for Donat alone, for there is surely nothing else out there that sounds like anything he does [...] challenging, but in the sense that it is rewarding to grapple with its leitmotifs and find connection with its disharmony. Much like scaling a treacherous mountain pass to behold the splendor of its surrounding vistas from its summit, it is an expedition well worth the sweat and toil one puts into it." - Firefly Mouth (USA)

"This time he's somewhere between Gameboy sounds, 80s darkwave and experimental pop music. However, one element remains the same: the distorted voice is perhaps something of a leitmotif. Four tracks can be heard on the EP The World I Will Leave. In particular, The Art of Ignorance sticks with its pressure, tempo and danceable darkness. Super amazing thing! A musical journey back to the future, so to speak!" - Luserlounge (GER)

"In these disturbing and destructive times, Alexander uses making music as a therapeutic tool to creatively process emotions. He arranges a constant change in the structure in each of the 11 songs, combines individual recurring parts and creates a whole. The intention to vary music is based on Alexander's eclectic interests in incorporating darkwave, EBM, industrial into the overall program. So each song is a reference and cross-reference for the creative underground, where DIY and depth merge with pulsing impulsive power." - Underdog Fanzine (GER)

"A musical centipede [...] Donat presents a mix of EBM, industrial, noise and darkwave. It sounds like Anne Clark, Nitzer Ebb, Calva Y Nada and :Wumpscut: are dancing together. A really nice and different side of the versatile Donat." - De Subjectivisten (NL)

"A brute version of Data Bank A" - Prémonition (FRA)

"Eerie off-kilter, compulsive vibes resound with foreboding intensity through stalking, pulsing chunky bass ripples, harsh, hallucinating synth strains, arrhythmic, jittery beats, and warped tight tinkly keys into restrained floods of tense anxieties around the powerfully frustrated airless shouts and howls of relentless caustic vocalizations, fighting, in vain, with a world that is not as it appears to be, whilst longing in boundless sadness to leave it all behind." - White Light / White Heat (ITA)

"Amazing!" - Loud Cities Radio Show (GRE)

credits

released March 11, 2022

Music & art by Alexander Leonard Donat

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Blackjack Illuminist Records Berlin, Germany

CD/tape/vinyl label from Berlin, Germany

Post-punk/ Coldwave/ Shoegaze/ Industrial/ Dreampop/ Synth/ Dreampunk/ Indie/ Ambient /Drone

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