“No Periphery” by Thrill Touch, an Uncanny Audiovisual Experience

Song Review By Iván Salinas

“No Periphery” begins with the sound of a starting car engine, immediately followed by loud knocking noises and flickering dash lights. It’s as if an old machine is slowly igniting. Then, there’s a drum beat that segways into a musical composition that builds in layers of dissonant synths, distorted guitars, drum machines, and even helicopter noises that make the whole thing feel so uncanny. It’s a musical piece that was created during a time of introspective isolation during a pandemic where melancholy and pain was felt within us every day that went by.

“There's a bank in my backyard/And I've got no light to grow my plants in.” The words are mostly spoken and get lost in all the noise going on around it. It’s a voice speaking to itself; a voice processing the effects of a capitalist structure obstructing life. It’s final words are as stunning as the song that accompanies it: “Like the shadow of the bank/Or the valley winds that pull a sand dune/I'll pull everything into me/and hold it like a trinket.”   

The music video was co-directed, shot and edited by Misty Steppe alongside Bianca Ascencio— who is also credited for hand-theatrics featured in the video. The video displays footage of a mannequin made of foam that has different faces projected onto it and a pair of hands in blue and green gloves moving around the mannequin’s facial perimeter. The hands end up crowning it and offering it a bouquet of white withered roses.

Overall, the audiovisual experience is a dark industrial combination of something like Kraftwerk’s “Radioactivity” mixed with Radiohead’s paranoid-android-era aesthetic. A decaying machine; an isolated being looking at its reflection; a capitalistic monster in the backyard; It’s a musical piece that is uncomfortably perfect for our times of discordance.   

“No Periphery” Cover Art

Artist Statement:

Fast, slow, loud, quiet, louder. Thrill Touch is an experimental post-rock trio that was born out of the sun-bleached haze of the Mojave desert. Their combination of high-energy melodies, dissident whispers and explosive noise form a cocktail of controlled chaos matched only by their turbulent and off-the-wall performance. No Periphery was conceived with little time and even less communication, but injected with all the personal introspection we’ve built in isolation during the pandemic.

Within a 3-week period, each individual member recorded a piece of the track to build off the piece they received by email. Working remotely and without an agreed upon concept, each stem inspired the next and the song built itself over time. It became a song about exploration and transition. Because of the pandemic, we no longer fear distance from each other and no longer feel tethered to our past histories and birthplace. We now wish to pursue the desires we felt were unattainable prior to March of 2020. Michael's locational change coincides with Misty and Bianca's plans for Washington and Oregon, where they seek to repair their mental health in the mountains away form the grind of Los Angeles.