Media Reviews

Welcome to our media reviews! Here we give our reviews on various pieces of media, ranging from good to bad. Usually, we'll save reviews for media that really impacted us (good or bad!).

PSYNWAV - MUSICAL TRANSIENTS (2025)

06/22/2025

★★★★★

Mashups have been part of internet culture for a long time, and in most cases they're made as a form of humor. How funny would it be to, for example, mix "Welcome to the Black Parade", "The Rainbow Connection", and "I'm a Believer" into one coherent song?

Psynwav dared to ask the question: what if a mashup was played seriously? What if it could tell a story?

"Musical Transients" is a collection of 8 songs that doubles as a coming out album. It tells the story of Psynwav's burgeoning gender dysphoria, their questioning, and their eventual acceptance and joy. Lyrics from existing songs are carefully arranged and sentence mixed to their fullest potential. Lyrics are given new, gut-wrenching context. To give you a taste without revealing too much, imagine "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" recontextualized to be about the dysphoria of a closeted trans woman. It shouldn't work, but it does. I'm not afraid to admit I cried listening to this record several times.

However, this album is still very fun. It sounds great, it's exciting, and if you weren't listening to the lyrics you wouldn't suspect its deeper meaning. If you listen to this, I 100% suggest keeping all of your focus on the lyrics (or using Genius while listening to it).

-Voxel (+Others)