The Zaxons’ Videopticons comes across as a post-punk record filtered through obsolete media. The Vancouver trio work with clipped rhythms, wiry guitar lines, buried vocals, and synth textures that call back to old public television, early home computers, and strange late-night broadcasts. The result is not just a retro exercise. The album uses those references to create a mood of surveillance, repetition, and low-grade unease.
“Keswick Cutouts” opens the record with a driving bass line and a restless vocal hook. The song has the immediate pull of a live band, but the production keeps everything slightly boxed in, giving it the quality of a signal coming through static. The title track continues that idea with a darker tone. Guitars and keyboards move around the rhythm section in sharp, economical gestures, creating a track that is tense without becoming heavy-handed.
“Mumpsimus” adds a brighter color to the album, though its pitch-bent synths and off-center melodic turns keep it from sounding too clean. “Bidston” is one of the more interesting pieces here, shifting from a straight post-punk pulse into stranger melodic territory. The band seems most alive when the songs begin to bend away from expectation, and that quality gives Videopticons much of its identity.
The middle section strengthens the record. “Adrian Knows” has one of the album’s stronger vocal melodies, while “Kingsgate Spiral” brings in hazier guitar tones and a slightly dreamier atmosphere. “Rhys Replica” raises the intensity with bigger dynamics, and closer “Television Play” ties the album back to its central image of media, performance, and distorted memory.
What gives Videopticons its appeal is the way The Zaxons commit to a narrow palette without making the songs blur together. The production is intentionally rough, with vocals often pushed into the mix and instruments cutting in at odd angles. That choice could have made the album feel unfinished, but here it supports the concept. The songs sound human, nervous, and slightly unstable.
As a whole, Videopticons works because it has a clear point of view. The Zaxons are drawing from post-punk and new wave, but they are not simply recreating the past. They turn those influences into something more specific: a record about flickering images, anxious rhythms, and the odd comfort of hearing a band fully committed to its own strange frequency.