As a queer person with attachment issues, life can feel like a revolving door of relationships. Sometimes an electric first date causes my world to shift off its axis, to now circle this one person, who then slowly fizzles out of my Instagram DMs. Other times it’s a best friend, who I can’t imagine life without, someone I would willingly swap souls with, becoming a presence I refuse to even call by its name after an exploding argument I couldn’t tell you the reasoning behind. These relationships have the capacity to mold me into something totally unrecognizable, leaving me undefined in their wake. This disembodied feeling is hard to truly channel, but I’ve connected to it most with cyanotype’s debut EP, the urge becomes the trigger, where oppressive soundscapes combined with cruelly beautiful lyrics like “Do you like that I think the sky looks like a bruise, you tell me it looks like me to you” refuse to leave you alone.
Born in Brooklyn, the dreamy, alt-rock duo of Silvia K. and J.C. Vargas used their project to work through many chaotic connections in their lives alongside their bond with each other. “We wrote [the urge becomes the trigger] over the course of a few months from first meeting,” K. wrote to me when I insisted on picking the group’s combined brains. “The EP was sort of us learning how to write together and allowing space for each other’s ideas.”
The bandmates met about a year ago, and the concept of their band followed soon after. Their musical compatibility was quickly apparent, leading to an immediate collaboration—“We wrote ‘clip’ the first week we met,” K. said. They pulled the name Cyanotype from John Herschel’s 1842 photograph, “An experimental cyanotype of an engraving of a lady with a harp,” one of the first cyanotypes to ever exist. The image also influenced the EP’s cover art, a photograph of a woman with a helmet pulled over her eyes and f-holds tattooed on her back, looking back towards the camera. While not identical to a traditional cyanotype, the image contains aspects of the medium: slightly distorted and disconnected from the reality of the original photo. In turn, the urge becomes the trigger reckons with the allure of a dream world as opposed to the reality of a relationship turned sour.
The first song, “clip,” immediately sucks you into this make-believe, no lead-up before the song’s crush of guitar, competing with K.’s gravelly vocals. The track references feeling weighed down, even while experiencing something supposedly relaxing like being held “down to sleep.” The repeated lyric “pure as its heavy” represents the singer’s dynamic in their life—accepting pain for the sake of their relationships. It not only fits in the self-sacrificial themes of the rest of the project, but also reflects the pair’s songwriting sensibilities. K. told me, “It comes in fragments; little bits of memory or phrase or melody that repeat then come together at once, all at once.” The song contains many of these nostalgic shards, like they’re plaguing the singer as they try to sort through “the weeks…” that “…are all blending together,” a “felted lulling.”
Much of the urge becomes the trigger exists in this elusive state, sifting through fractured feelings. “stare” exemplifies this, admitting immediately that the singer doesn’t “…know how I left myself right here.” This track has the most repetitive melody, as trapped in the past as the singer is. Many albums about hurt subsequently feature some type of comfort. But cyanotypes take an image and soften it for the viewer, creating an alternate universe. Instead of trying to move forward and heal or create new connections, the singer lets themselves remember all of the good and none of the bad. Vargas sings on most of “stare,” but about three quarters of the way through he goes silent, letting the instrumentals loop and K. take the lead. In her consistently melancholic hum, she says she is “static, stuttering.” The act of reliving can feel good, but doesn’t get you anywhere. Said best by the band, “there’s catharsis in making a home inside the memory of a thought you used to have.”
This method of regressing into fond reminiscence isn’t without its downsides, though. “wish sometimes” displays the anger present in this way of thinking, proclaiming “I wish you would die, so I don’t have to worry all the time about you.” K.’s voice strains amidst the clashing chords on the chorus, trying to make sense of her conflicting thoughts on the subject. Despite this anger, the guitar quiets down at the end so she can admit “all the people I’ve been, I’m tethered.”
The final track, “i want you,” toes the line between the anger of “wish sometimes” and the rest of the EP. While initially it sounds like the singer slipping back into toxic relationships, which it partially is, it also acknowledges this relationship is not healthy for them. “…don’t want to feel myself inside of me, a blacked out blur,” K. croons over soft guitar. The dissonance between their awareness of the darker sides of this relationship, while still craving nothing more than “to be with you” adds to the otherworldly sheen of the project. The world the singer describes is fake, evidenced by syncopated, slightly sharp notes and certain lyrics sung with extra bite, glitches of the real world coming through. It’s not realistic to live in an imagined world, built on faded feelings. With the urge becomes the trigger, though, cyanotype argues that sometimes that isn’t the point—“Things are easier said than done. It’s nicer to live in a false fantasy and its illusion when every day reality is the opposite of.”
