Bern­stein

Just as monochrome as the minimalist cover art for their singles, Bernstein’s sound flickers into the present through diverging channels. The Hamburg trio celebrate ominous post-punk, which – in tracks such as “Dis/Tanz” and “Schulterblick” (2025) – blends with new wave and synth-pop to create a strangely cold atmosphere. At times, the tracks mutate into gothic club bangers in strobe mode, as in “Kaleidoskop” (2024). Elsewhere, the lyrics extract existential truths about human interaction from seemingly everyday situations, as in “Paket Liebe” (2024) – accompanied by drum machine and dancing bass, buzzing strings and detached vocals. But no matter what they touch upon and sing about, everything becomes a grey sky through which the sun eventually breaks. The deceptive “Zwischenlicht” seems tinged with the same sepia-brown hue as “Ego aus Gold” (2026), which dominates here, there, and everywhere, creeping up and taking over before we realise what has been broken. It is a sound for our times, for existence in the belly of this dreadful machine from which we find no way out. Bernstein seek it nonetheless and hold the torch aloft. Always and forever.