New Music: BUTCHIE – Gaslight

Gaslight sees BUTCHIE hit a golden seam of electronic pop by combing through the embers of electroclash and futurepop on his EVERPRESENCE album.

It stays true to the two main strands within those genres: its driving pop and retro-dance aesthetics providing a contrasting setting for some heartfelt lyrics. Part observation of others and part self-examination, BUTCHIE – artist, poet, designer, and educator Matthew Waldman – uses imagery drawn from the urban flows and sights of Tokyo to reveal parts of his own life.

This is not a travelogue; well, it might be more accurate to say Gaslight is a travelogue with a difference. Waldman intersperses cityscapes and constant movement with a pen-picture of the emotional terrain that lies over, and sometimes interacts with, the urban environment.

I certain that I can hear subtle resonances of two of my favourite bands here: the unrelenting retrofuturism of Code 64 and the clinical, tightly programmed sensuality of The Presets. And if you’re aware of both of those bands, then you know you need to check out Gaslight and EVERPRESENCE.

“I began writing this track in September 2025, just after signing the paperwork that ended a 24‑year relationship,” states BUTCHIE. The concept of gaslighting had always felt alien to me, yet I realised I had been struggling with it for years, socially and especially at work in Japan, where similar dynamics were common in Tokyo long before “gaslighting” became an English buzzword.”

“Being gaslit by someone I loved was particularly brutal and manifested in both emotional and physical symptoms, forcing me to confront how deeply it had shaped my sense of reality. That experience pushed me into a deep dive on gaslighting as a cultural phenomenon, and the song evolved from a raw break‑up track into something broader – because once you define gaslighting as a form of blame‑shifting, you see how far‑reaching and dangerous it becomes in areas like immigration policy and environmental crises, where real human lives and health are at stake.”

“It also struck me that gaslighting has flourished in the same era that political nostalgia has come back into fashion – blame‑shift, turn around, look back. I’ve long felt a strong disdain for performative, public nostalgia, which I see as masturbatory: a self‑soothing fantasy for personal pleasure masquerading as collective memory. This track finally gave me a framework to write directly about that, and to thread those ideas into the lyrics in a way that ties intimate emotional abuse to broader cultural and political delusion.”

EVERPRESENCE came out on the 10th of September – you can listen to the album on Bandcamp, where it’s also available to download, Spotify, and Apple Music. Follow BUTCHIE on Instagram to learn more about his music, life, and other artistic endeavours.