Album Review Walt Disco - Unlearning

“For all of my life I was in the dark,” James Potter reveals on album opener ‘Weightless’, setting the scene for Walt Disco’s sprawling outsider pop opus, marrying oblique EDM with decadent goth punk to fabricate a transgressive statute on queer existence. No strangers to exuberance, ‘Unlearning’ is an effort in making oneself heard. ‘Selfish Lover’ marries James’ distorted vocoder with a hyper-saccharine pop chorus, and lead single ‘How Cool Are You’ pairs unnerving carnival “la la la”s with the boundless bounce of an LCD Soundsystem synth progression. James’ heavily-enunciated, sometimes vaudevillian vocals always serve as the perfect cherry on top of Walt Disco’s opulent ‘knickerbocker glory’ soundscape, eliciting a subversive yet immersive listening experience. Caustic ‘Macilent’ is an ode to the trivialisation of queer violence, presented with a vacuous drumscape, oversaturated snare snaps and throbbing distorted guitar passages. It captures a band confident in their own identity, holding it as a badge of honour instead of something to be hidden. On ‘Unlearning’, Walt Disco lead a careering tour around the dichotomy of queer existence. Either being swaddled in support by those you hold dear or instead held on a pedestal as a scapegoat for the wider bigoted populous. Approached with a worldliness only Walt Disco can conjure, this anarchic debut teaches us to embrace uncertainty with open arms, and express ourselves however we see fit. Beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder, it is within us.