Mutual Shock Unleashes New Album ‘Nervous Systems’
- Curious For Music Team
- 10 hours ago
- 2 min read
There’s a chill humming through Seattle’s undercurrent, and it arrives fully realized in Nervous Systems, the debut LP from Dan Powers’ brooding moniker, Mutual Shock. With an uncanny sense of restraint and precision, Powers renders modern detachment not just as a theme, but a sonic environment. This is music that doesn’t ask for your attention—it quietly demands it, lurking beneath your skin in subtle pulses and whispers.
Powers doesn’t hide his influences, nor does he try to. What makes Nervous Systems so arresting isn’t its reference points—of which there are many—but its cohesion. This isn’t retro fetishism; it’s reclamation. It’s the sound of concrete at night, of flickering sodium lights casting long shadows on empty parking lots. You don’t just hear this record. You inhabit it.
Where his 2024 EP Stimulus Progression flirted with themes of collapse and burnout, Nervous Systems leans in fully. It’s more immersive, more exacting, more willing to let the listener drift inside its grayscale dream logic. Powers has an ear for negative space—he builds tension not by stacking layers but by letting them decay. There’s an almost cinematic pacing at work, like a long tracking shot across a landscape you’re not sure is real.
What sets Mutual Shock apart in the increasingly saturated post-punk/electronic crossover is intention. Nervous Systems feels less like a product and more like a ritual. Every texture has weight, every beat is purposeful. The synths don’t just shimmer—they breathe, heave, falter. It’s not clean, but it’s never messy. Instead, the album unfolds like a controlled implosion, each detail meticulously designed to collapse in on itself.
In Nervous Systems, Powers has given us a record for late nights and long walks home, for fluorescent-lit offices and empty streets. It’s a soundtrack for alienation, but one that understands there’s beauty in the breakdown. Mutual Shock doesn’t just document our fragmented now—it makes it sound strangely human.
This release landed in our inbox thanks to Decent Music PR. It’s always a pleasure to discover fresh talent through their recommendations.
