2nd October 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
Is Bandcamp Friday the new Record Store Day? Hardly. For a start, it’s the artists who get paid on Bandcamp Fridays, with 100% of royalties from sales going to said artists, rather quite literally everyone other than the major labels which hijacked Record Store Day some years ago getting fleeced. And there’s no queuing round the block from 7am to have a hope of bagging an overpriced reissue, only to find some bugger’s got in there first and whacked it on eBay at double the price before you even make it home again. But Bandcamp Fridays have become a bit of an overwhelming event: with so much new music being released on Bandcamp Fridays now – and you really can’t blame artists for choosing to release their latest material to coincide with these days – but the risk is that releases can get lost in the blizzard of emails and hype on social media.
The release of The Pixel Rain’s ‘Glitching Sky’ is one that shouldn’t pass without mention or be one of those which gets buried by the noise. It’s the final single to be released from their forthcoming debut album, A Sense of Danger, due at the end of the month, and provides the title track for a four-track EP which features the previous three singles.
The musical vehicle of London-based Áron Siegler, The Pixel Rain, who’s ‘Last’ grabbed me in June, fuse industrial rock, post punk, synth-pop, and electro. And since TPR’s inception in 2023, he’s been keeping pretty busy, with a steady stream of single and EP releases.
As we learn from the accompanying notes, ‘At the centre of the song is a character retreating from an unfulfilling reality into a virtual world where they can construct a more powerful version of themselves. For Siegler, however, the idea extends beyond any particular technology or online space, reflecting more broadly on the increasingly commonplace ways people seek distraction and escape from anxiety, disappointment and everyday life.’
Seigler says, ‘The idea came from thinking about someone whose real life isn’t giving them very much, so they retreat into a virtual world where they can be whoever they want to be. There’s something quite sad about that, but also something a little ridiculous, so I wanted the story to have both sides to it.’
On the one hand, I agree: the fact we see new stories every day about people with AI girlfriends or boyfriends, or who say their AI companion is their best friend, or who use an AI therapist isn’t just ridiculous, but also plain weird, and speaks volumes about the world we live in right now. People crave human contact, but, unable to handle it, and / or unable make connections, retreat into virtual worlds. On the other hand, I was hanging out in chatrooms around the turn of the millennium when it truly felt like a new world. I – without any intent – met my future wife in a chatroom, before dating sites had even been conceived, and, later, MySpace would prove to be one of the most liberating and escapist alternative worlds, where you truly could be another you, and the connections I made there, through shared interests, led to some of the most incredible creative collaborations. But then the Internet got hijacked by capitalism and corporations and advertising and essentially turned to shit around 2010. Bastards.
Whereas ‘Last’ put the guitars up in the mix, ‘Glitching Sky’ sits in the bracket of upbeat electronica, and while the lyrics are ambivalent, framing as they do both sides of the story, the vibe is more euphoric dance. It’s somewhat unexpected, but is well done, and sits nicely in the context of the EP as a whole, with the downtempo ‘A Sense of Danger’ bringing a starker, more coldwave aspect, with some soaring guitar detail creating a gripping dynamic with the crisp electronic drum sound.
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‘Sacrifice’ sits between Depeche Mode and turn-of-the-millennium electrogoth, while the EP’s last track is, fittingly, ‘Last’. And it’s an anthem. Fact. One thing that’s clear from this EP is that The Pixel Rain appreciate the importance of the ordering of the songs on a release. Having the songs is priority number one, but the order in which they appear. I worry this is a dying art in the age of streaming and skipping after fifteen seconds, but it does matter for those of us who od still listen to EPs and albums properly. And Glitching Sky is an EP which deserves to be listened to properly.
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Photo by Evelina Klimova
