SG58: COOL HEAT - Permanence [EP]

COOL HEAT is the chillwave project of Chicago-based artist and photographer Eden Sierotnik. His EP Permanence, follow-up to his 2022 debut album Nowhere, is a seamless continuation of Sierotnik’s atmospheric, cinematic sound that expresses in cadence a gorgeous immediacy – an intoxicating presence that grows more potent with each passing second. It is meticulous, maximalist, modern dream pop that dances gracefully with shoegaze and converses methodically with synthwave, but ultimately, everything remains in perfect balance.

In fact, Permanence’s opener “Shiver,” in fact, is a catch-all for everything that makes COOL HEAT what it is; melancholic, yet unapologetically fervid synth, industrial percussion, and ghostly vocals. Both singles “Harmless” and “Won’t be Long,” nestled in the middle of the EP, while on the softer side, houses these elements with nesse. “In The Distance,” however, just might be Sierotnik’s most evocative, propelled by a stunning, near-uorescent guitar melody that seems sentient, duplicating itself at will and into innity. But rather than oat into the ether, it all condenses and ows into the mesmerizing “Lake,” which expresses Sierotnik’s synth work at its absolute nest.

If Nowhere represented an illusory, metaphysical state of being, then Permanence expresses the stunning endlessness and eternality of this expanse, solidifying it as a place of pure potential rather than a site of oblivion.