?lan Vital - comprising Renee Barrance (keyboards, vocals), Danny Brady (synths, drum machines, live mixing) and Nikolai Sim (bass) - formed 2015 in Dunedin's None Gallery, an undefined artist-run creative community which is also the home of Death And The Maiden. The expression ?lan Vital describes the vital force. The music on "Shadow Self" seems to symbolise that life impulse in an ambiguous zone between machine and human worlds. Their sound blends keyboards evoking psychedelic organ sounds of 1960s garage rock together with contemporary European synth-pop dance music, layered on analogue drum machines. Distorted, overdriven bass guitar adds a further element of chaos into the mix. Feedback-strafed soundtrack instrumentals for imaginary dystopian Sci-Fi films bloom into upliftingly gloomy melodic dream-pop catharsis about memory, longing and obsession
