Disintegration: The Best of What’s Next

It’s no secret that humanity is in its flop era. Microplastics quite literally live rent-free in our brains, health insurance companies are using AI to deny your grandmother’s nursing home stay, and ham-fisted, power-tripping cops are shooting people over $3 subway fares. Meanwhile, culturally speaking, nostalgia is all the rage, as popular rock groups from decades past continue to dominate arenas and stadiums, often raking it in well into their 70s, and the demand for band reunions has reached a fever pitch. There’s even a burgeoning crop of young, devoted influencers who yearn for the 1980s, sporting era-correct, poofy, product-caked hairdos and roaming around frozen-in-time shopping malls. More ominous happenings aside, you’d also be hard-pressed to find showgoers dancing to guitar music anymore—perhaps a symptom of our social media-pilled hyper self-awareness and inability to be fully present, plus the purported prudish attitudes of younger generations.

Enter Disintegration: a forward-thinking synth-rock quartet that channels existential fury into throttling dancefloor fillers and succulent pop melodrama. They pride themselves on immersive, percussive textures, firing away like a machine gun and cultivating an unearthly trance, as well as a trickster approach to production and composition. Their extreme electronic processing renders guitar lines nearly indistinguishable from synth lines, while their bass guitar harmonics effectively masquerade as guitars. Fresh and thrilling as this Cleveland, Ohio four-piece may be, they’ve been sowing the seeds of this project for a long time. Producer, guitarist, synth player and co-vocalist Noah Anthony has been making experimental, electro-pop, industrial and noise-rock music for years under solo monikers like Profligate, Deuce Avenue, and Night Burger, and his masterfully shadowy sound and gripping attention to detail are woven into every fiber of Disintegration. Powerhouse lead vocalist and synthesist Haley Himiko wields an immediately recognizable, wailing alto that she’s honed with gothic post-punk group Pleasure Leftists since 2010, and she delivers some of her most tantalizing, euphoric performances to date in Disintegration.

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Bassist Christopher Brown is also a local fixture, having played in a number of rock outfits—most notably, beloved Cleveland band Cloud Nothings—and as of late, he’s become more involved in synth-forward projects. Brown has recently shared atmospheric electronic music under his own name, including a six-track release last year for Unifactor, a cult experimental tape label run by his Cloud Nothings bandmate and Cleveland music nucleus, Jayson Gerycz. Disintegration are rounded out by David MacCluskie, who adds crisp live drums to cut through the hypnotic drum machine grooves. MacCluskie has played in various Cleveland groups like the improvisational, otherworldly LEAKING, the sweltering punk Roobydocks, and the genre-bending collective Children of Artists, and he’s also an excellent photographer and multidisciplinary artist.

Disintegration’s debut full-length Shiver in a Weak Light arrives via the Cincinnati-based indie label Feel It Records, and it rattles with the foreboding, punishing throbs of electronic body music, the rapturous pop immediacy of new wave and the squawking guitars of noise-rock. Their convulsing, pop-y noise-tronica is an enlivening treasure trove, and it’s perfectly suited for the slow-motion car crash that is the 2020s, always walking a fine line between confrontation and escapism. Paste met up with three-fourths of Disintegration at Cool World, Himiko’s kitschy vintage shop in Cleveland’s Gordon Square district, to get the scoop on the record’s special sauce and what makes this band tick.

The kaleidoscopic storefront is filled with patterned statement clothing, cute planners and stationery, and funky glassware, and it’s hard not to mention the giant black-and-white mural of Tears for Fears peeking out from the back corner. The ‘80s inspiration is undeniable, and you can hear it in the band’s music too—Himiko even gleans an “unpretentious” joy from watching those aforementioned denim-clad ‘80s influencers. But what drives Disintegration and makes them so exciting is a desire to transform sounds they’re drawn to, rather than reheat them. “We have our interests in music and movies that we love, and that can’t be discounted, and it’s inevitably an influence on you, but we’re never trying to remake something or even define ourselves with a genre,” Himiko says. “I recently saw a Geneva Jacuzzi interview where she was asked a question about ‘80s comparisons, and she said something like, ‘I’m never trying to make ‘80s music. It’s just the best music I know.’”

In a literal sense, the band’s most prominent signifier is tremolo, tremolo, and more tremolo, which supercharges their music to the nth degree. With Profligate, Anthony often utilized electronics and synths as effects processors to give his music a tactile thrust, and he wanted to pursue that concept further with Disintegration. Profligate was primarily a solo venture, but it briefly expanded to a five-piece live band before the pandemic hit. Soon after, Anthony felt an itch to play in a full group again, and he tapped Brown—who also learned Profligate songs for a livestream performance in 2021—to jam together and flesh out material he was working on.

“[Noah] had this idea for the Slicer, the extreme tremolo, and the bass would go through that,” Brown recalls. “I was like, ‘Damn, that sounds cool! I’d like to do that!’” The Slicer is a BOSS audio pattern processor, which one effects pedal YouTuber describes as “the tremolo that’ll cut you.” Essentially, it allows users to manipulate the rhythms of various audio signals, and this small box lends a bullet train-like speed and choppy intrigue to Disintegration’s music. Once the duo recruited Himiko, it was all systems go, and their tenebrous sonic dreamworld quickly materialized. In March 2023, Disintegration dropped their first EP Time Moves for Me, which they describe as “a little tasting menu,” and despite this four-track release being their introduction to the world, the hallmarks of their sound were already fully formed. Though not without an experimental flair, it’s the sound of a group with a clear vision: primitive synth minimalism, propulsive programming, and industrial clangs, with Himiko’s theatrical vocals and unforgettable pop hooks tying the whole thing together.

“I just want to create my own musical vocabulary,” Anthony says of his vision for the band. “It’s so hard to have an original sound, and we’re figuring it out, but I feel like it goes to a different place that’s special, musically and sonically.” On Shiver in a Weak Light, they’ve found a new gear, with catchier, imposing pop melodies that sit more comfortably in the mix, stranger soundworlds with sharper tones, and the addition of sweltering guitar solos. Himiko attributes the album’s potency to a more diverse and experimental sound, and Anthony also credits its grabbier production and mixing, as well as his car stereo-induced madness: “I drive around for work, so I’m constantly listening to whatever. While making these songs, I would just listen to old demos on a loop and drive myself crazy.” There’s no denying Disintegration are onto something—after all, creepy music seldom sounds this life-affirming.

“I’ve had a long road, musically, so I’ve learned all the things, and then I’ve unlearned everything, and now I try to do both at the same time,” Anthony says. “It’s all about the song—what does the song want? It doesn’t need 80 tracks, but ‘Shadow of Love’ does have 80 tracks [laughs].” When asked how they know when to stop packing on the instrumental layers, Brown answers simply and amusingly: “81 tracks.”

While Anthony was navigating this delicate creative balance, Himiko found herself in a different spot. “My setup in this band is pretty minimal, and most of my experience of being a vocalist is just going in totally dry,” Himiko says. “Being in a punk band or whatever you want to call it, there’s just a ‘lean into doing nothing’ thing. I don’t know if I overcompensated for that at times, or wore it as a badge of honor … I feel like I’m enjoying actually using a pedal and doing other things and learning little bits along the way.”

Meanwhile, Disintegration was an opportunity for Brown to exercise restraint—at one point, he affectionately characterizes his part on “Shot by Both Sides” as “dumb”—and approach the bass in a totally different way. “For me now, it’s knowing when to not do things, like addition by subtraction,” Brown says. “Before I’d be like, ‘I have to show that I can do this thing.’ Now it’s like, ‘Who fucking cares?’ … It’s a lot of fun. Other bands I’m in or have been in, at least bass-wise, you’re playing off things like, ‘Where can I find a pocket to be in?’ Or ‘How can I accent a vocal line or percussive element?’ [With Disintegration] that’s already taken care of with the bass synth, so it frees up a lot of space to do things that you wouldn’t normally do. It’s more like, ‘I have to fill up this frequency range down here.’”

Some of Shiver in a Weak Light’s punchiest moments feature ebullient guitar lines that mimic vocal melodies. When gyrating guitars mirror Himiko’s moody, insistent chant of “When you write it down, you will remember” on “In Your Diary,” it sends a pleasing shockwave through my (microplastics-filled) brain. The following track “Lost and Found” has that same gratifying trick, and it’s another effortless pop gem that would stick out on any record’s tracklist—hell, you could almost karaoke this one without getting judging glares from a dive bar full of people. The jerky, spiky industrial-pop of “Shot by Both Sides” also leaves its mark, with unpredictable textures thrashing around and tickling the depths of your ear canal.

In contrast to Himiko’s soaring pop choruses, “A Thousand Clouds of Static” is equipped with the mysterious, unshowy cool of Anthony’s lead vocals, which build to a heady climax and interact with the muffled robustness of Himiko’s backing voice. Then there’s the ever-important first track, “Pioneer,” opening with a chugging synth that sounds like you’re ascending a rollercoaster hill, full steam ahead—the perfect intro for a group with a knack for transportive world-building. A friend of the band likens the song to passing through “a weird sewer in a videogame,” which succinctly captures the track’s murky and menacing yet whimsical quality. Shiver in a Weak Light is a feast for the unwieldy imagination, evoking dystopian parallel dimensions, sparking circuit boards, and unnerving footage of blobby microorganisms multiplying at an alarming rate.

For Anthony, the album achieves what he set out to do, and he thinks it leaves an intriguing runway for future material. “I just wanted [the album] to be really diverse and well-rounded and something for everyone—I think it’s pretty accomplished in that,” Anthony says. “I think [dance music] is a territory that we’re going to mine in the future for sure, because it’s right there. It’s so easy to go there. We have all of these synths. We have these beats.”

“In my fantasies, I would love to perform in a dance space in the shadows,” Himiko says. “You don’t even see the band, and everyone’s dancing. That sounds like a great scenario to me, but I’ve never seen that in Cleveland [laughs] … It’s weird to say this about music you’ve participated in, but I feel like this band is more like the music I listen to, and that has always been the case. I don’t listen to a lot of punk music or rock. I’ve always been more interested in music with drum machines and dance music or more experimental stuff.” Ironically, the more obviously danceable her music has become over the years, the less she moves onstage. “Now I have a synth in front of me, and the mic is on a mic stand. With Pleasure Leftists, I was just the singer, and the music was really fast. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have all that shit in front of me! [laughs]”

Lyrically, Shiver in a Weak Light doesn’t mince words. Artful lines about violence, deception, anger, fear, environmental ruin and shame swirl, painting a phantasmagoria of hellish scenes. “How will I ever survive the dream?” from “A Thousand Clouds of Static” is one of the album’s most striking lines, indicating that this isn’t the kind of nightmare you can wake up from. “Just build a bigger weapon / Your singled out sympathies” from “Pioneer” feels especially timely, as U.S.-funded genocide rages on in the Middle East, and “‘Cause the planet is lost / and the damage is done / Will we all be forgotten / One by one?” from “Lost and Found” certainly plunges a dagger. But there’s more optimism to this band than just their music’s invigorating force. “Abandon / trading my soul for something else / Abandon / shock of the newer point of view” and “Are you ready to walk / Are you ready to run / Do you think you can stop when the race has begun?” both read as steadfast rejections of the resigned choice to wear blinders.

“I feel like ‘Lost and Found’ is a weird melting pot of how I feel about this point in my life and the world,” Himiko says. “The world is this terrible fucking place, and the only thing that makes it remotely livable or tolerable is the smallness of your tiny little life, and what you curate around you.” She describes her lyricism as a vehicle to process emotional dualities—and particularly on this album, the dualities of rage. “I’m working out anger from various parts of my life or life in general,” Himiko says. “Sometimes it’s conceptual, other times it’s absolutely a sonic thing. Then sometimes it’s like, ‘Whoops, that’s really personal! But no one has to know that!’”

The album title, Shiver in a Weak Light, is a pretty dour one, denoting grim, isolating struggles, but it suits the record’s unrelenting sonic vibrations and its seedy visions of flickering street lamps. “[It’s about] feeling emotionally in the shadows and the emotional temperature of being cold, whether it’s what you’re putting out to the world or what you feel the world is giving you, but it’s highly interpretive,” Himiko says. “For me, it’s feeling like no one sees you,” Anthony adds.

It’s a heavy album, both musically and emotionally, but Disintegration carry that weight beautifully, with each metallic thwack and delectable refrain exploding with passionate resolve and inspired artistry. When they’re not joking about ripping off one of their favorite bands Killing Joke, or getting super animated about three truly horrific promotional albums released by the now-discontinued alcoholic beverage line Bang Hard Seltzer (which they listened to repeatedly amidst some post-show delirium on a recent Midwest tour), they’re plotting their next creative endeavor. Anthony lights up at the thought of purging his current unreleased recordings so he can start from scratch, and Himiko’s busy opening a new vintage mall and events space in Ohio City called Paradise Galleria. Much like their dusky songs, Disintegration’s members dart in and out of the shadows, always making moves and reveling in the positively offbeat.

<a href="https://disintegrationcleveland.bandcamp.com/album/shiver-in-a-weak-light">Shiver in a Weak Light by Disintegration</a>

Lizzie Manno is a former Paste editor, with bylines at Stereogum, Pitchfork, SPIN, Billboard, Flood Magazine, The Recording Academy and Cleveland Scene. Follow her on Twitter @LizzieManno.