Proceed and still
Lost to where I’m from
Turn to a fault
Symptomatic numb
It begins, as so many modern confessions do, with a disturbance in the archive. A scent, a scrape of sound, the soft abrasion of place against the present tense. Memory is less a song than a corridor in which Past Model pace deliberately, hands grazing the walls of a private museum. Austin’s Kyle Garcia, having shed former alliances and folded previous chapters into the background, names this project with disarming candour: Past Model. A title that implies the self as prototype, revision, residue. What we were…what we carry…what we abandon in order to proceed.
The band frames their intent plainly, then plunges inward. Memory occupies that space after separation when language falters, and the body drifts. The lyrics trace dislocation, numbness, the slow work of clearing air. Authenticity arrives through what is withheld; distance dims perception. Somewhere within the dimness, a fragile clarity forms. The music moves with cool concentration. Darkwave and coldwave form the skeletal structure; post-punk and noise rock stain the edges.
There are industrial murmurs, a trace of gothic gaze in the air, and the ghost of Suicide’s minimal insistence hovering near the drum machine. Garcia’s history in the Austin scene dissolves into something more solitary here. Projects collapsed, relationships recalibrated. Loss as ignition point. In Light, the larger body of work circles the concept of reconciliation without theatrics.
For the video for “Memory,” the band was less interested in illustrating the lyrics than in extending their psychic afterimage. As they note, memory can be triggered by “a certain smell, a touch, a noise, a location,” unleashing a rush of scenes once buried or deliberately suppressed. The blindfolded characters move through what the group describes as a self-imposed interior maze, navigating the architecture of recollection while resisting direct confrontation. Photographs—some more than a century old, scavenged from antique shops across Austin—appear in sudden flashes, like fragments jolted loose by nostalgia or grief. The effect is cumulative rather than linear: remembrance as interruption, as involuntary return.
Visually, the group leans into their interests and lineage. “We settled on a concept that would showcase Past Model performing the track in a stripped down/ industrial space while simultaneously following two characters, (Mtalazia Stone and Jaycie Voller) through abstract imagery to symbolize the themes of reflection, loss and reconnection,” they say.
Shot in 4:3, black and white, film grain breathing across the frame, the piece nods to Fincher-era austerity and the early video grammar of Romeo Void and Depeche Mode. Tiger Hill’s lighting fractures the room into zones of glare and obscurity. It’s a beautifully filmed piece of art.
Watch Memory below:
Past Model stands in the Austin ecosystem with quiet conviction, making appearances at SXSW, Hot Summer Nights, and Obsidian X Fest… yet their focus remains internal. Memory is an act of forgiveness disguised as a performance; a rehearsal for release.
Formed in the summer of 2024 by Kyle Garcia after the collapse of earlier collaborations within Austin’s post-punk circuit, Past Model began as a solitary recalibration. Personal loss, regained identity, and the slow work of re-assimilation shaped its earliest recordings. What started as a solo endeavor soon evolved into a fraternal partnership, with Kyle’s twin brother Kevin stepping in on guitar, the two refining a language built from darkwave and coldwave architecture, edged with post-punk tension and noise-scarred abrasion.
The name itself signals movement — the versions of ourselves we inhabit, discard, and archive. What stands before us now will one day be a relic. Sonically, the project threads industrial textures and a gothic gaze through live instrumentation, balancing drum machines with guitar lines that stretch toward shoegaze’s blurred horizon. Foundational influences such as Asylum Party, The Chameleons, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, and Suicide continue to hum beneath the surface, while contemporary kinship can be traced to The KVB, Cold Cave, Soft Vein, Topographies, and Drab Majesty.
Austin’s evolving DIY and darkwave community has offered fertile ground: stages at Hotel Vegas and Elysium, support from Bleached Records, and a widening Texas circuit reaching San Antonio’s Paper Tiger. Yet even amid a receptive scene, Past Model’s center of gravity remains introspective. The forthcoming work circles dualities of light and black, drawing inspiration from Aldo Tambellini’s stark visual meditations on birth, death, beginning, and end.
In that tension between illumination and erasure, Past Model continues forward — not chasing spectacle, but tracing the fault lines of memory itself.
Listen to Memory below and order In Light here.
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