Jluc courchet / SPIRYT 🇫🇷 — NEPAL
Album Review
Review by Infectious Unease Radio / Subterranean Zone Radio — Voice In The Void
Written by Gordon Lawrence Taylor
Artist: jluc courchet / SPIRYT
Album: NEPAL
Released: 3 May 2025
Location: Toulon, France 🇫🇷
Voice and Lyrics: Kimberly Kornmeier
Style / Tags: Experimental • Cinematic • Coldwave • Darkwave • Post-Punk • Trip Hop
Bandcamp / Buy Digital Album:
https://spirit5.bandcamp.com/album/nepal
Bandcamp Artist Page:
https://spirit5.bandcamp.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/esprits83/
There are albums that do not arrive as ordinary collections of songs. They enter like a presence. They move through the room slowly, changing the temperature of the air around them. NEPAL by jluc courchet / SPIRYT, with voice and lyrics by Kimberly Kornmeier, is one of those albums — dark, cinematic, damaged, intimate, and strangely beautiful.
Released on 3 May 2025, NEPAL sits in the shadowed space between coldwave, darkwave, post-punk, experimental electronic music, and trip-hop atmosphere. But it does not feel like a record trying to fit neatly into any one genre. It feels more like a private world: red light in a black room, a voice coming through smoke, drum machines and synths moving like machinery beneath emotional ruin.
The cover artwork is important to the feeling of the album. The black background, the deep red form, the strange jellyfish-like shape, and the gothic lettering create a visual language before the music even begins. It feels biological and spectral at the same time — something floating, burning, bleeding, or drifting through dark water. That image suits the album very well. NEPAL does not feel clean or polished in a commercial sense. It feels nocturnal, underground, wounded, and alive.
The album opens with “THE INTRUDER,” a track that immediately establishes tension. The rhythm has a firm electronic pulse, but the atmosphere around it feels haunted. It is not aggressive in a simple way. It feels like something entering the room quietly and refusing to leave. The track has a cold, direct movement, with enough space around the voice and instrumentation to create unease. As an opener, it works very well because it does not explain the album — it announces the disturbance.
“BUTTERFLIES” brings a more melodic and fragile movement, but it still carries darkness underneath. The title might suggest softness, but the track does not feel innocent. It has a nervous beauty to it, like delicate movement trapped inside emotional pressure. There is a strong coldwave / darkwave feeling here, with the electronic rhythm holding the song steady while the voice creates the human tension above it. It feels romantic, but not comfortable. It is beauty with a shadow behind it.
“MY ONLY REALITY” is one of the album’s strongest emotional pieces. It stretches further, allowing the atmosphere to open and deepen. The track has a more immersive feeling, almost like a long interior confession. The title itself feels direct and vulnerable, and the music supports that sense of someone holding onto one truth while everything else becomes unstable. The voice works beautifully here because it does not need to overpower the music. It becomes part of the fog, part of the emotional architecture.
“ETERNAL LOVE” moves with more urgency. There is a stronger forward drive, and the track carries the feeling of dark romantic obsession rather than simple love. This is not bright romantic music. It feels closer to love as haunting, love as memory, love as something that remains after damage has already been done. The electronic rhythm gives it movement, but the atmosphere keeps it shadowed. It is one of the moments where the album’s gothic heart becomes very clear.
“THE MILLIONS TEARS” is one of the most evocative titles on the album, and the track carries that feeling of accumulated sadness. It does not feel like one moment of grief. It feels like grief repeated, layered, and carried over time. The sound has a restrained heaviness, which makes the emotional effect stronger. Nothing feels over-performed. The sadness sits inside the rhythm and the voice, moving steadily rather than collapsing. That restraint is one of the album’s strengths.
“NUMERO 6” shifts the energy into something sharper and more angular. There is a brighter edge in the sound, but not in an uplifting way. It feels coded, mechanical, and slightly detached, as if the album has moved into another chamber. The track adds contrast to the record because it does not only remain in slow melancholy. It brings a colder, more nervous electronic character, almost like a signal being transmitted from behind a locked door.
“ONE LAST TIME” returns to a more emotional and melancholic atmosphere. The title suggests farewell, and the track carries that feeling clearly. It has the feeling of a final message, a last look, or a closing moment before disappearance. The mood is not theatrical. It is more quietly devastating. There is something very effective in the way NEPAL allows these emotional images to stand without forcing them into obvious storytelling. The songs feel like fragments from a larger inner world.
“YOUR EYES, I DIE” is one of the most striking tracks on the album. The sound has a sharper, more restless quality, and the title is pure dark romantic fatalism. It captures the record’s mixture of desire, surrender, pain, and gothic drama. There is intensity here, but again it comes through atmosphere rather than excess. It feels like a song about being overwhelmed by another person’s presence — beauty becoming danger, intimacy becoming collapse.
“BURNING ALIVE” slows the movement and gives the album one of its heavier emotional centres. The title is violent, but the track does not simply explode. It burns more slowly. There is a deep, shadowed pressure in the music, a sense of being consumed from within rather than attacked from outside. The slower pulse gives the track weight, and the atmosphere has a strong cinematic quality. It feels like fire seen through thick glass.
“THIS DAY” is another long, atmospheric piece, but it carries a different kind of heaviness. It feels like the record looking directly at the present moment. After so many tracks that seem to move through memory, obsession, dreams, and emotional ruins, this title feels simple and blunt. The track has a reflective quality, with the music holding a dark, steady space around the voice. It gives the album a late-stage feeling of recognition — not resolution, but awareness.
The closing track, “AND LIFE PASS ME BY,” is a fitting end. It is shorter, but emotionally strong. The title alone carries resignation, distance, and sadness. It feels like watching time move while standing still. As a final statement, it leaves the album suspended rather than closed. There is no clean ending here, no easy release. The album simply fades into that feeling of life moving beyond reach.
What makes NEPAL work is its atmosphere and consistency. Across the album, jluc courchet / SPIRYT builds a world of cold electronics, dark melodic movement, post-punk shadow, cinematic tension, and emotional restraint. The music has a raw underground quality, but that is part of its character. It does not feel manufactured. It feels personal, nocturnal, and obsessive.
Kimberly Kornmeier’s voice and lyrics are central to the album’s identity. Her presence gives the songs their human wound. The voice does not sit above the music like decoration. It moves inside it. At times it feels like confession, at times like memory, at times like a ghost trying to speak through the machinery. That relationship between voice and sound is what gives NEPAL much of its emotional force.
This is not an album for casual background listening. It is a night record. It belongs to dim rooms, headphones, red light, private sadness, and the strange comfort of dark music that understands emotional damage without needing to explain it. It is cold, romantic, experimental, and cinematic, but it also has a rough human pulse running through it.
NEPAL is underground music in the real sense — not polished for easy approval, not shaped for algorithms, not made to chase brightness. It is a dark transmission from a private interior world, carried by synths, rhythm, voice, shadow, and memory.
It is music for those who know that beauty can bleed, that love can haunt, and that sometimes the deepest songs are the ones that sound like they are coming from somewhere beneath the surface.
Tracklist
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THE INTRUDER — 02:51
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BUTTERFLIES — 03:56
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MY ONLY REALITY — 04:48
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ETERNAL LOVE — 03:13
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THE MILLIONS TEARS — 04:35
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NUMERO 6 — 03:14
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ONE LAST TIME — 03:16
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YOUR EYES, I DIE — 02:50
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BURNING ALIVE — 04:39
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THIS DAY — 04:35
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AND LIFE PASS ME BY — 02:48