V.E.N! Finds Light in “Waking Up In The Night”

V.E.N! (Virtual Emotions Network) treats darkness like a doorway on “Waking Up In The Night,” a six-track EP that sends you wandering through the small hours with your eyes wide open. Behind the acronym sits Edu Campoy, a Seville songwriter who stitches melodic power pop, alternative rock and progressive flourishes together the way he builds his pop-art collages: boldly, seams showing, heart fully exposed.

Opener “Connection” barrels in at a full sprint, a pop-punk rush built on a dense, pulsating wall of sound and an anthemic hook. Yet the speed is a decoy. Underneath sits the hollow quiet that follows a loss, that odd sensation of reaching for familiar comforts and grabbing only air. It sounds like pacing the kitchen at 3 a.m. with the volume cranked so the silence can’t talk back.

“Break the Compass” starts in delicate, plucked melancholy before swelling into an overdriven, cathartic climax, its soaring lead line practically tearing the map in half. Campoy chooses the unmapped path, and the song settles among soft, nature-like ambience, as if he has walked out of town and into the trees. “The Scared Animal” then trades introspection for new wave sparkle, a quick, catchy hook dancing over a pulsing low end while the lyrics travel from betrayal and nowhere-to-hide anxiety toward forgiveness and survival.

V.E.N! Finds Light in “Waking Up In The Night”

The back half grows gloriously theatrical. “Crossing the Last Valley” opens on a twinkling, mystical pattern and leans into cinematic grandeur, complete with a crying, elongated solo that bends like a voice cracking mid-confession. “Evolution” goes full gothic, chiming eerily before collapsing into a heavy, marching wall where love and mortality wrestle in the dark. Then “The Home of the New Man” dims the lamps entirely, a wistful indie-folk reflection on weariness that lets time and the elements rinse away old burdens.

Taken together, the record quietly argues that getting lost might be the whole point. Loneliness, vulnerability and a broken sense of direction all become raw material for transformation. So the next time you jolt awake at some unholy hour, maybe the question isn’t how to fall back asleep, but what the night is trying to show you?