This Friday sees the release of Chromatics co-vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Adam Miller’s second solo release, with the Illusion Pool EP following his 2022 debut album Gateway. While his former bandmates in the disbanded synthpop group have ventured deeper into the realms of dream-pop and horror-synth (Miller’s own debut was a guitar-driven ambient instrumental release), Illusion Pool may be the closest recreation of Chromatics’ dreamy take on post-punk to date outside of synthwave offshoot Desire.
The latest single from the five-track release, though, is actually a reinterpretation of one of Chromatics’ songs, with “Camera” serving as a gothier and more ’80s-guitar-driven take on the title track from the band’s 2018 EP. “To me a song is never over, and I love to explore all the possibilities of where it can lead me,” Miller shares. “When I began performing live with [my backing band] Inner Magic we started incorporating reimagined versions of some of my favorite Chromatics songs into our set, and this minimal, more guitar-heavy version of ‘Camera' just felt so great on stage that we decided to record it.”
Miller goes on to offer an interpretation of the lyrics, which place the single’s anachronistic sounds firmly in the present. “For me, the lyrics of the song are about the interminable desire of the digital era to replace the inherent beauty of something natural with a synthetic version; hence the lyrics ‘spray painting flower petals red.’ But in creating the synthetic, the natural is often sadly destroyed. Sometimes life becomes too real.”
Check out the hazy live-performance video of the track below, directed by Wesley Doloris and Bernhard Schwartz, and pre-order the EP here.
