Monad shares woozy dream-pop gem ‘1976’ - new EP ‘Gift’ out 15 Aug

Today, Monad - the shape-shifting project of Tel Aviv producer and dream-pop experimenter Eshchar Nachmany - releases new single '1976', the latest taste of his upcoming EP 'Gift' (out 15th August).

Following the dreamlike haze of recent single 'UDB', Monad's new single '1976' is a warm-blooded ode to 70s AM radio pop. Built on breezy guitar licks and sun-faded harmonies, it channels the soft-focus nostalgia of Big Star, Wings, and Seals & Crofts, reimagined through Monad’s modern psych-pop lens.

'1976' is released today alongside a self-directed video, shot by Tom Simon, channelling the washed-out warmth of 1970s television performances.

Where 'UDB' lingered in emotional stasis, '1976' embraces a different kind of vulnerability: that of youth on the edge of change, as Monad explains:

“This song is that classic summer love-story-and-heartbreak song. Senior year, leaving town for a college three states away, long summer nights, one last endless summer. Every night feels like it could be the start of something or the end of everything."

Initially written during a workshop led by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, '1976' began as an exercise: “Can I make a contemporary-feeling song that feels like it’s sampling an imaginary #1 hit from an alternate universe in 1976?”

The result is Monad’s most direct attempt at writing a pop song, one that still carries the strange, spectral atmosphere his music is known for.

Continuing his quiet pursuit of pop music's outer limits, Monad’s influences are as eclectic as his output is unclassifiable. From Ennio Morricone’s widescreen melancholy to Broadcast’s haunted futurism, Todd Rundgren’s sonic adventurism to the lo-fi science-fiction of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Flaming Lips, too, cast a long shadow, with Monad sharing their fondness for warped psychedelia.

The result is music that resists the binary of analog vs digital - instead Monad finds feeling in circuitry and makes synthetic sounds breathe. In recent years, Monad has become a quietly magnetic presence in the global underground, with standout appearances at Liverpool Sound City and Dot to Dot Bristol in the UK plus praise and support from tastemakers like The Guardian, CLASH Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, Ones To Watch along with regular airplay on stations including KEXP, NTS, Radio X and KCRW.

Monad’s new EP 'Gift' is out 15th August. New single '1976' is out now. Monad is donating all proceeds of purchases of '1976' and the 'Gift' EP on bandcamp to Standing Together - a joint Jewish-Palestinian movement fighting for peace, equality and social justice in Israel-Palestine.