Out today: Tried/Trophic Cascades by Vogues

It is somehow already the last Tuesday of the month, which means that we have another offering for you from our beloved Vogues. Those of you fortunate to have been in attendance at our label showcase on Sunday were treated to a stunning closing set from Vogues who gave both of these tracks their live debut. We’re excited to watching the songs come to life in the near future. Have a listen, add it to your sad-bangers playlist, your driving home playlist, your future regrets playlist. Save it, favourite it, take to the forums, upvote, download, record a ukulele cover and stick it on TikTok. LISTEN HERE and read on for the full press release. Enjoy. You’re welcome.

photo credits: Leo Garber

Vogues announces their next double single on Joy of Life International

 LISTEN HERE

Vogues is the solo project of a Cornish-born London-based musician and producer exploring identity, memory and emotional excess through a lens of camp pop maximalism and lo-fi intimacy. Also known as the synth player in The Golden Dregs, Vogues combines home-spun textures with lush, referential arrangements — nodding to Arthur Russell, Anohni, The Blue Nile and Blood Orange — while charting a personal terrain of queer desire, misdirection, and self-reinvention

Following the expansive, genre-blurring introduction of Blood Moon / Cold Summer Nights (described by The Most Radicalist as “recalling queer greats from Arthur Russel to Anohni”), Vogues returns with Tried / Trophic Cascades, a double A-side that finds the project at its most vulnerable, jagged and direct.

Tried is a mantra of self-doubt and defiance, looping like a thought stuck in your head after an argument. Over a driving, minimalist beat and sharp, spiralling synths, Vogues’ voice probes the friction between potential and performance: “Maybe I could’ve tried a little harder / Maybe I could’ve been a bit smarter.” Equal parts tongue-in-cheek and sincere, it’s a tightly wound post-pop confession of ambition, regret, and the quiet, aching hunger for more, culminating in a euphoric crescendo of layered vocals.

Accompanying Tried is Trophic Cascades, the early morning to Tried’s middle-of-the-night. This track opens up into something looser and more poetic, a haunted, vivid slow-burner that weaves memory, heartbreak and environmental collapse into a single disintegrating image. “It’s raining on my painting / You’re slipping from my memory,” Vogues sings, backed by spectral Prophet synthesisers, Matt Merriman’s ghostly drums, and a fierce and emotionally fraught electric guitar.

Both tracks continue to explore the personal and sonic themes of the Vogues project: identity in flux, the echoes of past selves, queer desire, and a fascination with imperfection. Produced by Benjamin Woods (The Golden Dregs) and Davy Roderick, and mastered by Mikey Young, the recordings foreground intimacy and friction contrasting polished instincts with raw instrumentation.

Visuals for Tried come from 3D artist Pareys Bean, while Trophic Cascades is accompanied by video work from drummer Matt Merriman (who’s own musical project goes by the name of Junk Male). These expand on the music’s patchwork aesthetic and continue the themes of a central body of light that has unified this most recent set of Vogue’s releases.

For fans of: Perfume Genius, Blood Orange, Arthur Russell, The Blue Nile, Solange

 LISTEN HERE

Artwork credits: Pareys Bean

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