New Audio: Montréal’s Das Mörtal Shares Chilly and Uneasy “NOSHAME”

Montréal-based singer/songwriter, producer and electronic music artist Cristóbal Cortes is the creative mastermind behind the rising chillwave/goth project Das Mörtal. Cortes’ music career started in Berlin, where inspired by Steve Moore and Aphex Twin, he began to craft a dark, nostalgia-inducing sound that meshes an array of influences including German techno, horror and sci-fi soundtracks.

Cortes has released a handful of EPs and albums that have amassed over 20 million streams on Spotify. He has supported those efforts with tours as an opener for Vitalic, Pertubator, Carpenter Brut and a lengthy list of others and as a headliner with stops across the States, Scandinavia and France among others. He has also played sets across the global festival circuit, including Osheaga, Transmusicales de Rennes, FME, and Meg Festival. Adding to a growing national and international profile, the Montréal-based artist has also received airplay in over a dozen countries and several influential YouTube pages.

While still rooted in the dark, occult vibes that has won him attention both nationally and internationally, Cortes’ fourth Das Mörtal album Bury The Sorrow is a change in sonic direction for the Montréal-based artist, with the material rooted in a sound that meshes elements of trap and trip-hop. Thematically, Bury The Sorrow may arguably be Cortes’ most personal to date: The album is informed and inspired by the isolation, unease and stress of the past couple of years, starting — naturally, perhaps — with pandemic-related quarantines. As the Montréal-based artist explains in press notes, Bury The Sorrow in many ways is about how difficult it was to actually make the album — with the album’s material constantly hinting at the unstable mindset that created it.

“NOSHAME,” Bury The Sorrow‘s latest single is a chilly bit of coldwave built around dense layers of glistening synth arpeggios, a relentless motorik groove paired with skittering four-on-the-floor, a remarkably catchy hook and Cortes’ achingly yearning yet detached vocal. While sonically recalling early Depeche Mode and others, “NOSHAME” accurately captures the boredom, unease, self-loathing and anxiety of someone who’s been isolated and left with their own pride, thoughts, memories and regrets.