Late-90s electroclash and dance punk never really left the room. They just waited for someone who actually lived that era to pick the tools back up. Van Veen’s first track, Psychic Lunch, does exactly that: an indie dance cut built on an electro-tinged beat, a bouncing bass line, and the kind of club-night monologue that sounds like it was written on the way home from Le Bain.
Van Veen is Jared Hiller, the New York musician, artist, and electronic-instrument designer previously known as one half of the neo-kraut ensemble Operator Music Band. He is releasing under an older moniker now, drawing on the electroclash and dance-punk records that shaped him at the end of the 20th century. After more than a decade of touring across the US with his own projects and others, he started a line of synths and guitar pedals and curated digital media and visual art exhibits. He currently lives in Bangkok, where he is studying curatorial practice and working on new music.
Psychic Lunch is the opening statement of that solo chapter. The track is full of musings and gripes about the good and the bad of clubbing. Concerns about “falling in the hot tub at Le Bain” sit right on top of a staccato, bouncing bass line. Tuned runs of roto toms mark every rise and fall. The repeated hook is just “ya ya ya,” shouted joyously in one pass and delivered deadpan in the next, somehow saying everything and nothing at all. That is the whole trick: the production stays lean and physical while the vocal stays half-joking, half-exhausted. It is indie dance that still remembers when dance-punk bands treated the club as both playground and complaint box.
That mix is having a moment again. Listeners who grew up on LCD Soundsystem, early electroclash nights, and the last wave of guitar-and-drum-machine bands are circling back to records that feel handmade instead of playlist-optimized. Hiller’s background helps. Years in Operator Music Band trained him to treat rhythm as architecture. Designing his own synths and pedals means the textures on Psychic Lunch are not stock presets. The result is a first single that already sounds like a night out you can quote later.
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Psychic Lunch is a small, specific picture of club life: the bass that will not quit, the drums that poke you in the ribs, the hook that refuses to explain itself. Play it loud and decide whether the “ya ya ya” is a celebration or a warning. What do you think of Van Veen’s first solo cut? Drop it in the comments.
