New Reality Records – 7th November 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
Almost a year to the week on from the release of their dark, emotionally powerful album, Age of Loneliness, Vamberator – the duo consisting of Jem Tayle, formerly of Shelleyan Orphan, and former drummer with The Cure, Boris Williams – have given a welcome poke to remind us of their existence with the release of a new single, in the form of a remix of ‘I Need Contact’, courtesy of Rolo McGinty of The Woodentops. The pedigree is rich here, and so is the quality.
McGinty’s reworking is sensitive, subtle, and what is adds is very much attenuated to the themes and underlying concept of the song, and, indeed, the album as a whole. Yes, the title renders these concepts self-evident, and while the project was spawned during the pandemic, when solitude and loneliness reverberated around the lives of so many in ways which had been hitherto unimaginable, where we find ourselves now often feels little better, with social fragmentation, social division, and the whole equation of work / life balance and all the other endless shit raining down day after day, maintaining connections – real connections, not those false connections of yelling into the void on social media – has never been more difficult. The things which were supposedly designed to bring people together – from open-plan workspaces to instant messaging and social media – have, in reality, trashed the threads of real-life social interaction. Millennials no longer meet down the pub after work or on a Friday night, and kids watch YouTube Shorts instead of going down the park. Gen X and older… who knows? We’re all lost, drifting.
‘I Need Contact’ captures that sense of desperate anguish, and McGinty adds something else – not least of all an enhanced sense of sadness and poignancy, with the addition of cellist Asakura Momoka and a field recording of an old diesel train engine. These add, respectively, shades of brooding and nostalgia (and who would have thought, not so long ago, that a diesel train would be a source of nostalgia? Time marches on, and at pace, and leaves us all behind eventually). But these additions are made subtly, keeping the soulful vocal to the fore of a minimal arrangement.
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The release is augmented by another Rolo McGinty remix, also lifted from the album. Here, ‘Creature in my House’ is stretched from its original five-and-a-half-minute duration to closer to double that. Pumped along by a retro ‘baggy’ beat (I can’t but be transported back to the 90s, as well as being reminded of the vibe of The Cure’s Mixed Up), and it does offer up a very different side of Vamberator. While the original version blends a mid-pace glammy stomp with hints of The Cure at their more playful, this lifts both the tempo and the spirits, and slings in some zany guitar breaks. Funky isn’t quite the word, but groovy might well be, and one might add ‘buoyant’, too, although it ventures into more experimental, and even dubby territory during its second half.
These are quite different versions, and make for a great single in the classic sense of A and B-side contrasting. They work well, and provide a well-timed reminder that the album’s out and well worth investigating – or giving another spin.
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Aural Aggravation 