Methyl Orange Fixed a Krautrock Gaze on the Sick Collective Psyche in ‘Important Things’ –

Methyl Orange has launched a synthwave meditation with Important Things that, if everyone got caught in the tides simultaneously, tomorrow would be a very different day. The Manchester project of sonic architect Nick Wall has spent years building immersive instrumental worlds, and this release sharpens that vision into something pointedly humanistic. Since 2017, Wall has steadily grown a dedicated following through a prolific catalogue, with 2025’s Lost for Words drawing strong praise, before 2026 opened with a top-three placing in the Radio Wigwam Awards’ Best Electro Act category. Important Things feels like another decisive step forward.

Advocating for empathy, equality, and compassion rarely translates into a hypnotically stylised sonic experience that leaves you increasingly arrested, but this cinematic feat of expansively stylised electronica is no ordinary strain of synthesised fare.

The cinematic scope is panoramic as Methyl Orange delivers spoken-word mantras over cold cosmic synths that nod to krautrock’s pioneers while keeping their gaze fixed on rectifying the sick collective psyche of the present, an individualised navel-gazing downward spiral race to the top. There’s power in the softly spoken repetition, in the slow unfurling tension, in the way the track holds its nerve and lets the message land without dressing it up in cheap sentiment. John Cooper Clarke and Kraftwerk alike would approve of this message.

Important Things is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify and Bandcamp.
Review by Amelia Vandergast