Bassvictim’s PEACE + WAR: Too Much of a Good Thing

Bassvictim does not sit idly. The London duo, consisting of vocalist Maria Manow and producer Ike Clateman, has built their persona on confrontation: rowdy, unpredictable live performances, bewildering public arguments that often threaten to turn physical, and music that oscillates between abrasive electronic distortion and something resembling a twisted nursery rhyme.

It is their refusal to settle that has made Bassvictim one of the more intriguing acts emerging from the electronic scene. Their new album PEACE + WAR, released November, 6 through VOTB and Warner Records, pushes this identity even further (possibly too far). It runs 19 tracks and 57 minutes, their most sprawling and restless statement yet.

The title offers a fitting introduction to the contradictions that define the record. PEACE + WAR pits light against dark, tenderness against aggression, and moments of relative silence against overwhelming noise. It follows their 2025 debut album Forever. However, they differ quite greatly in feeling. Where Forever drew upon live instrumentation, allowing its unruliness to emerge from the interplay of physical sounds, PEACE + WAR retreated almost entirely into electronics. Produced in a bedroom studio by Clateman in Vietnam, the album replaces the organics of its predecessor with an artificial, claustrophobic soundscape.

My high point of the album came before its release. Track 17, “White Flag,” was released on Oct. 21, 16 days before the rest. It captures the duo’s appeal in a remarkable way. Manow’s vocals draw the listener in by delivering catchy one-liners. Once they have you hooked, the song turns, and the electronic machinery that surrounds her begins to assert itself. The tension between the inviting melody and the force of the production is precisely what makes Bassvictim so compelling.

Unfortunately, the rest of the PEACE + WAR rarely sustains this balance, falling flat compared to its promising teaser. With 19 tracks, the album should have ample room to develop the ideas that make “White Flag” so successful. Instead, its length frequently works against it. Bassvictim’s sound is dense, erratic, and emotionally volatile, qualities that are thrilling in isolation but become exhausting when stretched across nearly an hour. On several occasions, I found myself listening to what I assumed was an extended interlude, patiently anticipating the next song, only for the next track to begin and offer much of the same experience.

This is particularly frustrating, because when tension finally releases, the results are wonderful. Alongside “White Flag”, tracks such as “7”, “Wake up”, “Happysad”, and “War Song” demonstrate that the duo has not lost its ability to construct memorable, emotionally resonant music. The songs all feel capable of standing on their own, and each will certainly find its way into my listening rotation.

Yet their individual successes only make the album’s broader shortcomings more apparent. Rather than building momentum around these stronger moments, PEACE + WAR repeatedly interrupts itself. Transitions are abundant, but rarely meaningful, and its weaker passages do little to illuminate the stronger material surrounding them. Too often, the record seems more interested in introducing another idea than pursuing the previous one. Both “Charred Glass” and “No. 33 piano” are plagued by this problem of introducing an interesting concept but not developing it. By the second half, the distinction between songs intended as major statements and those serving as connective tissue becomes difficult to discern.

There is an irony in this failure of cohesion. Bassvictim has made a career of cultivating disorder, yet their music only retains its power when something stable exists against which it can operate. This album lacks that. Without restraint, even the most inventive production risks dissolving into background noise. PEACE + WAR seems so committed to sustaining its own instability that it diminishes the impact of the tension it was meant to deliver. Ultimately, despite some genuinely fantastic songs, the album as a whole fails to deliver a complete listening experience.

Charles Hirsch can be reached at chirsch@wesleyan.edu.