Writing and photos by Izel Villarba, find more of his work here.
I discovered Boy Harsher through an old Tinder date. She enjoyed dancing to their music alone in the dark, something I found weirdly endearing. I’d soon find myself doing the same – blasting Pain for the first time and manifesting a solo Gothic rave in my bedroom. Neither that date nor Tinder panned out to anywhere substantial, but thankfully Boy Harsher’s music stuck around. It’s evocative, sensual, and dark in all the right ways; the kind of music that soundtracks nighttime stalking, whether you’re the stalker or the one being stalked.
The duo that makes up Boy Harsher, Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller, create a visceral mix of dark wave, EBM, and synth punk. I think it’s important to mention the two met at film school in Savannah, Georgia. Channeling David Lynch, Suicide, and Nico (to cite a few influences), their sound carries cinematic qualities. Close your eyes to their music and you’ll find yourself in the glow of a lustful horror movie, or the gloom of a cyber-noir on ecstasy, maybe speed. Muller would eventually provide musical accompaniments for Matthews’ spoken word poetry and create the building blocks for the music we’re all familiar with as Boy Harsher.
Coming off their directorial film debut, The Runner, Boy Harsher hosted a sold out Music Hall of Williamsburg as part of their tour to promote the project; performing in front of fans for the first time in a while. It was an isolating experience to hear Matthews’ otherworldly voice echoing through artificial fog, singing songs like Come Closer and lyrics like
“I am needing this from you tonight
Your side, your dark side
I want you to turn off the light
Your side, your dark side”.
Hypnotic screams, minimal synths, and drum loops found everyone in the crowd alone – yet alone together – pulsing, gyrating, sweating. I imagined I was back in my dark bedroom again, dancing for no one but myself: a living, breathing Goth cliché. If only that old Tinder date could’ve seen me. I suppose it’s possible she was at the show and maybe she did see me, under a guise of shadow and fog.
We’re all tired of talking about the pandemic, yet it’s hard to ignore its presence under our newly unregulated lives. We’re still learning how to recover from a period of distancing ourselves, both physically and emotionally. Boy Harsher champions desire and loneliness, two things we’ve become experts at. They ask us to romanticize the darkness, to turn off the light and embrace ourselves.
You can follow Boy Harsher on tour, Facebook, and Instagram. Watch The Runner here.
