West Wickhams’ new EP Sakura is a brief, intoxicating drift through impermanence, a lo-fi post-punk dreamscape that feels like a secret world caught between memory and haze. Jon Othello and Elle Flores, the slightly feral duo from the Isles of Scilly now based in Richmond, have crafted five tracks that hum with melancholy and shimmer with strange, intimate beauty.
Up to the Old Tricks opens the EP like a half-remembered reverie. Drum machines click nervously beneath reverb-washed guitars, while the duo trade vocals like conspirators daring each other to blink. It’s over quickly, but the chorus lingers, a ghostly echo that invites immediate replay.
Ice Block slows time. Sparse percussion and crystalline synths carve a frozen space where Flores’ voice drifts like frost on glass. The track feels fragile yet hypnotic, perfectly capturing mono no aware: the awareness of beauty in its fleeting, transitory form.
By the third track, As the Camera Shuts, West Wickhams have sharpened their spectral palette. Lurking synths flicker like dying bulbs, the beat hesitates and sways, and the vocals flit in and out of focus as if being observed from a distance. The tension never explodes, but the restraint is hypnotic, and the track feels cinematic in miniature.
EQ The Viper coils and writhes. Basslines slither, synths twist like restless shadows, and whispered textures emerge from the mix, making the song feel alive, venomous, and unpredictable; a moment of full-throttle unease in an otherwise measured, melancholic EP.
Closing with Save Yourselves, the duo returns to gentle reflection. Organ tones creep in, layered drones stretch the soundscape, and the song drifts to a quiet, unresolved ending. It’s a soft warning, a final reminder that beauty is fleeting, fragile, and worth lingering in, even for a moment.
Sakura is as much an artefact as a record. The limited-edition CD, Japanese obi strip, and whimsical trinkets mirror the music’s delicate, ephemeral quality, insisting on tangibility in a streaming-dominated world. Fourteen minutes of frostbitten, hand-crafted post-punk synth pop, this EP is intimate, enigmatic, and quietly unforgettable; a velvet drift through shadowed, fleeting moments..
