There’s something properly bleak about the idea of dancing through the apocalypse while still worrying about whether you’ve got enough in your bank account to survive the week, and that’s exactly the corner of modern life that London’s Chas Leman has decided to soundtrack on Repetitive Strain — a four-track EP that trades in groove as much as it does quiet dread.
Following on from his more guitar-leaning debut, this feels like a deliberate handbrake turn into loop-driven, synth-laced territory, leaning into programmed beats and vocoder-warped vocals rather than the organic instrumentation he’s previously relied on . It’s a shift that makes sense once you clock the thematic obsession here: the numbing repetition of low-income work, the cost-of-living chokehold, the general creeping suspicion that everything is on fire and nobody in charge really cares .
Opening with WASHING MACHINE WEEK, Leman wastes no time in establishing the EP’s core tension — bright, plasticky electronic rhythms sitting underneath lyrics that feel like they’ve been written during a lunch break that was never long enough. It’s catchy in that very specific Gorillaz/Hot Chip way where the groove is doing a lot of the emotional heavy lifting, but there’s always a slightly sour aftertaste to the sentiment.
Then comes THE GOOD LIFE?, which is arguably the strongest track on here. There’s something genuinely affecting about the way its lounge-pop crooner tendencies clash with lo-fi drum samples and warped synths. The production walks a fine line between melancholy and irony, mirroring the idea of aspiration in a system that rarely rewards it. That contrast between musical vibrancy and lyrical resignation is clearly intentional, and it works — most of the time.
THE REAL WORLD is where things get a bit shakier. Thematically, it’s right in the EP’s wheelhouse, but sonically it occasionally drifts into familiarity. The electronic textures are lush enough, but you do start to wish Leman would push further into something uglier or more sonically abrasive to match the lyrical bite. At points, it feels like the track is pulling its punches — like it wants to critique modern banality without fully committing to the chaos that critique implies.
Closing track THIS IS LIFE brings things back into focus, looking backwards with that rose-tinted nostalgia that tends to creep in when the future feels increasingly unmanageable. There’s a resilience baked into the songwriting — less nihilism, more reluctant endurance — which keeps the EP from collapsing into pure misery.
What Repetitive Strain does well is vibe. It nails that weird, late-stage-capitalism dancefloor energy where you’re moving your body because stopping would mean thinking too hard about rent, inflation, or whether AI’s about to nick your job. But occasionally the production plays it a little too safe, particularly when compared to the ambition of its subject matter. If Leman leaned harder into sonic risk — more distortion, more chaos, more willingness to let the grooves fracture — these tracks could hit with far greater emotional impact.
Still, as a pivot into electronic territory, this is a convincing one. It’s anxious pop for anxious times. And unfortunately, that makes it feel uncomfortably relevant.
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