There’s a specific kind of night drive baked into Bromsen’s new single, “Data Highway,” the sort where the headlights of oncoming traffic begin to hypnotize, and you forget if you’re running from something or just running. The Berlin trio—Richard and Karlo Bromsen, now propelled by the engine of Bon Schmelke’s drums—has crafted a track that moves at a hundred miles per hour yet somehow feels completely, existentially stuck in traffic.
The sound is a magnificent contradiction. Richard Bromsen’s synthesizers don’t just nod to the retro; they hum with the nervous energy of a server farm about to overheat. I swear, certain frequencies remind me of the smell of static electricity rising from an old CRT television just before the picture tube dies. It’s a tangible, anxious texture. Above this, Karlo Bromsen’s vocals don’t just soar; they’re a flare shot into the digital twilight, a raw plea cutting through the system’s noise.
This isn’t a song about the romance of the open road. It’s about the frantic, aimless scroll of modern life made audible—a journey not to a destination but as a means of outrunning one’s own thoughts. A strange kind of SOS.
It taps into that deeply modern paradox of being networked to everything while feeling tethered to nothing. We are all moving, all transmitting, all searching. But in this dazzling, overwhelming motion, how do you ask for a hand to hold when your own are so busy scrolling?
