Aural Aggravation

22nd July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

‘At Last, I Found You’ arrives as a standalone single to bookend the releases from their album, F.I.V.E. (Fear Increases Violent Emotions), released in January, ahead of a two-month tour of Europe, including some UK venues that are some way off the beaten track (which is a bummer for those on the regular circuit stop-offs, but a boon for those in neglected places like Whitchurch and Morecambe. The song was written during the F.I.V.E. sessions but intentionally held back until listeners had time to fully absorb the album, before emerging as its final companion piece, and it says something of the standard of material – as well as the level of confidence in said material – when a band are comfortable leaving what they know to be one of their strongest cuts off the main release.

But, as guitarist and bandleader Fabrizio Giampietro explains, “‘At Last, I Found You’ was always the most immediate and instinctive song we wrote during the F.I.V.E. sessions. We deliberately left it off the album because we wanted listeners to experience that record’s emotional arc without this song becoming its centre of gravity. Six months later, it

felt like the right moment to finally share it.” There’s a logic to this: so many albums are dominated by THE single, and in the age of streaming, where people tend to play tracks rather than albums (apparently – I personally shun streaming as a medium, and make a point of listening to vinyl and CD albums in full, from end to end, both when reviewing and also while cooking) it’s a decent strategy to encourage – by any means – listeners to focus on the body of work that is the album, over individual tracks.

‘At Last, I Found You’ is an obvious single cut, being a classic slice of dark synth pop with a distinctly European feel, and in drawing comparisons with early A-Ha I’m paying a strong compliment (I will forever maintain that the darker currents in their music are severely underappreciated, and songs like ‘I’ve Been Losing You’ and ‘Manhattan Skyline’ have ben wrongly eclipsed by ‘Take On Me’, because the Internet and compilation album compilers have a tendency to reduce acts with many, many hits down to one song to be endlessly repeated… don’t believe me? Duran Duran’s ‘The Reflex’ spent six weeks at number one in the UK, but you could be forgiven for thinking that ‘Rio’ was their only hit, and likewise that The Cult only had ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ as a charting single. We can learn from this just how history gets twisted, not primarily by the dissemination of false information, but by omission. Of course, I’ve digressed – that’s what I do, and I also strongly believe that the narrative of real life isn’t to be found in the main thread, but in the digressions. It’s not about the career or the landmark events, it’s about the weird detours and the dirt that falls between the cracks along the way, the stuff you don’t even notice while you’re looking at the next thing, the goals.

‘At Last, I Found You’ is dark but positive: Massimo Ciampani’s baritone vocal  leaps upwards for the soaring choruses. An insistent beat and throbbing bass drive the song, which draws together elements of 80s synth pop, 90s goth and contemporary darkwave with a crisp precision.

What goes around certainly comes around: Christine Plays Viola formed in 2008, which was certainly a lull time for the popularity of goth and adjacent music. The present is another world, not just with heritage bands like Corpus Delicti and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and The March Violets releasing new material and / or touring, but new acts like Mouth Ulcers and Just Mustard bursting onto the scene. These are exciting times, and ‘At Last, I Found You’ is an exciting release. And while I rarely give advice, I would strongly recommend checking out the album.

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