Perhaps, the grand illusion of the lockdowns was that the Covid-19 pandemic was a rupture within the existing order. Politically, in all camps, the feeling that the measures amounted to something fundamentally new was prevalent. Artistic endeavors focused on a »novel« temporality. Slowing down, empty time and the suspicion that something is ending are amongst the favorite motifs of pandemic music. The duo Op-Art (short for: Oblique Pleasures Amidst Rough Times) is a child of the lockdowns to boot. Their debut with the evocative title »The Final Act« offers apocalyptic Dark Wave upon the altar of civilization. Priest of this end-times ritual is Andrew Clinco, best known as the seductive singer of Drab Majesty.
The difference between the two projects is mainly conceptual. Both are in-between Dark and New Wave, baptized in the sound of the 80s. Yet, where Drab Majesty is romantic, Op-Art is oriented towards modernist paragons. »A sonic analog to the visual art movement of the 1960s«, Clinco suggests. On a practical level, this means more complex rhythms, psychedelic phrases, repetitive song structures. In politics, the myth of the »novum« of the pandemic has already been disenchanted by the ubiquitous attempts to continue like before. It finds an artistic equivalent in an album of the 2020s, attempting to resurrect the futurist music of the 1980s to celebrate the 1960s. »The Final Act« is Exhibit A of artistic retrograde.
