For fans of: Depeche Mode, Crystal Castles, Daft Punk
On Nonstop Romance, Mareux, the noir-pop moniker of Aryan Ashtiani, steps out of the shadows of viral fame and into something stranger, steamier, and more daringly cinematic. A decade from his breakout moment with his 2015 cover of The Cure’s ‘The Perfect Girl’, which became a darkwave anthem of pandemic-era yearning, Mareux now trades restraint for bold, writhing sensuality.
Across nine tracks, Mareux folds his signature coldwave melancholia into a more elastic palette: EBM, Italo-disco, synthpop, even flashes of Eurodance. The result is a record that moves like a mixtape made for a late-night lover. If his earlier work lingered at the edge of the dancefloor, Nonstop Romance drags us onto it, sweat-soaked and emotionally unmoored.
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Opening instrumental ‘Blackmail’ sets the mood with screeching synths and a motorik pulse, an evocation of both M83 and a cinematic midnight car chase. It’s followed by ‘Radio Club’, where auto-tuned vocals swirl in a paranoid haze, like Mareux is transmitting from a dive bar just before collapse. By the time the title track hits, the album’s mood is locked in: “I want a nonstop romance / and I don’t want it if it isn’t with you,” he breathes over a bouncing synth riff, one foot in a goth club, the other in vintage Pet Shop Boys territory.
Vocals throughout are often pitched, stretched, or smudged, echoing the album’s recurring theme of love as distortion. ‘Wild At Heart’ is particularly dazzling, all groovy drum machines and suicidal devotion (“I swear you’re all I need / I’m gonna blow my head off”) delivered with a detached sincerity that makes the melodrama land. In contrast, ‘Ébène Fumé’, featuring Riki, is pure sad Italo dream-pop; soft-focus vocals adrift in shimmer and longing.
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Still, Mareux hasn’t abandoned his darkwave roots entirely. ‘Laugh Now Cry Later’ and ‘Blue’ are the spiritual kin of ‘The Perfect Girl’ – slower, moodier, and more emotionally raw. On ‘Prodigy’, strange synths flicker beneath a plaintive plea for reunion, and closer ‘Snake Eyes’ descends into a slithering, instrumental gloom.
Nonstop Romance is an emotionally saturated fever-dream of a record – one that understands love not as a stable state but as obsession, projection, and performance.