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Music

Sigha’s “Positive Mutilation” is Music for Getting Lost in Dark Places

The track off the producer’s new album mirrors the dark, gritty underworld of ‘Stranger Things.’
Photo courtesy of the label

Throughout the third episode of sci-fi Netflix series Stranger Things, distraught mother Joyce (played by Winona Ryder) frantically assembles a Christmas-light version of a Ouija board to make supernatural contact with her missing son Will. Amid a display of colorful flashing lights, their connection is successful, but what should feel like a small relief quickly turns to chills when he tells her what she needs to do at that very moment: "R-U-N."

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Behind Joyce, an unearthly faceless creature, known as the demogorgon, begins to tear down the walls of both her living room and her reality as she knew it. The creature's dark and decaying underworld, referred to as the "Upside Down," has breached the world of the living.

If the show's 80s-inspired synth soundtrack isn't your thing, watching the scene with Sigha's "Positive Mutiliation" on the speakers is highly recommended. The track is part of the London-based producer's upcoming second album Metabolism, due out February 24 on Token Records. On the LP, distortion is a common theme, and even in the span of the song's 103-second runtime one can hear the cracks and corrosion that eat through Sigha's ominous sound design. It's music for getting lost in the Upside Down—perhaps for good.

Speaking over email, Sigha tells THUMP about the track: "'Positive Mutilation' was actually born out of a track that didn't make it on to the album. I really like the original version but it just didn't seem to quite fit. In the end I stripped all the melody away and reprocessed the kicks and low end. The way all the elements seem to swell into these crescendo moments was all based around pushing the feedback hard on a T-Resonator. If you dial in the settings just right you get a wonderful saturated sidechained effect, creating that push and pull of kick and bass thats so present on the track. After all that reprocessing 'Positive Mutilation' seemed like a very apt title."

Listen to Sigha's "Positive Mutilation" below.

Throughout the third episode of sci-fi Netflix series Stranger Things, distraught mother Joyce (played by Winona Ryder) frantically assembles a Christmas-light version of a Ouija board to make supernatural contact with her missing son Will. Amid a display of colorful flashing lights, their connection is successful, but what should feel like a small relief quickly turns to chills when he tells her what she needs to do at that very moment: "R-U-N."

Behind Joyce, an unearthly faceless creature, known as the demogorgon, begins to tear down the walls of both her living room and her reality as she knew it. The creature's dark and decaying underworld, referred to as the "Upside Down," has breached the world of the living.

If the show's 80s-inspired synth soundtrack isn't your thing, watching the scene with Sigha's "Positive Mutiliation" on the speakers is highly recommended. The track is part of the London-based producer's upcoming second album Metabolism, due out February 24 on Token Records. On the LP, distortion is a common theme, and even in the span of the song's 103-second runtime one can hear the cracks and corrosion that eat through Sigha's ominous sound design. It's music for getting lost in the Upside Down—perhaps for good.

Speaking over email, Sigha tells THUMP about the track: "'Positive Mutilation' was actually born out of a track that didn't make it on to the album. I really like the original version but it just didn't seem to quite fit. In the end I stripped all the melody away and reprocessed the kicks and low end. The way all the elements seem to swell into these crescendo moments was all based around pushing the feedback hard on a T-Resonator. If you dial in the settings just right you get a wonderful saturated sidechained effect, creating that push and pull of kick and bass thats so present on the track. After all that reprocessing 'Positive Mutilation' seemed like a very apt title."

Listen to Sigha's "Positive Mutilation" below.