A someone born in the sixties, I thank my lucky stars that I made it through the education process before it had been hollowed out by politicians determined to have a populace incapable of critical thought as well making higher education into a cudgel of debt to ensure a tractable and fearful populace. I was among the first generation to play with inexpensive desktop computers as creative tools and currently, in 2025, our owners prefer to cut human creativity [that they have to pay for] out of the equation entirely with the latest wrinkle aiming to edge me toward a life of Neo-Luddism; the despicable pipe dream of Artificial Intelligence, virtually within their frantically grasping hands. Meanwhile they are literally stoking the fires of climate change via the enormous amounts of energy required to stop paying a worker a wage. The eco-social cost of this is staggering, but the 0.001% are seemingly assured not to pay it. Capitalism appears to be steering 99.999% of humanity towards oblivion as it ratchets up into a comfy love nest with Authoritarianism in a “no-one-could-have-predicted-that” move.

Do I have a bone to pick with human society ca. 2025? You might say that. Fortunately, I am not alone in these concerns. Nostalgia Deathstar, the electro duo comprised of Sean Albiez and Martin James, will release an album tomorrow that’s a masterclass in describing the pot containing the sociopolitical waters coming to a boil in the year 2025. It follows a tactic of examining these threads as viewed through a lens of higher education and how it is currently under attack as part of a plan to re-structure society to benefit a select few. Using Neoliberal market forces to foster the notion of a Zombie University that illuminates this work. Here in America, we’re setting the pace for others to follow, as usual, with an active war on education as conducted by an Authoritarian government attempting to shape assent in the crudest way possible. Through blunt economic force…for now.

Sean Albiez is a musician and academic who makes electronic music as Ghost Elektron. Together, with Martin James of Mothloop, they form the duo Nostalgia Deathstar. A concern whose very name points towards to the obliteration of easy comfort! Martin James has been a working at universities in the UK for much of the last 20 years; either in a Professorial capacity or otherwise. He’s witnessed and experienced terrifying things happen up close to the very idea of a University education in the UK and he’s here to report back with his findings. With synthesizer accompaniment. Let’s dig in.

Nostalgia Deathstar: They Kill The Flame – UK – CD/LP/DL [2025]

1. Theme from ZU [featuring Professor Tara Brabazon] 4:42
2. Break Their Hearts My Pride and Hope 4:27
3. Human Resource 5:05
4. The Ground Belongs to Me 5:15
5. Pneumotic 3:06
6. Art V STEM 4:26
7. The Sooner You Begin 6:52
8. Helioseismic 6:40
9. Oath of Allegiance (No Kings) 5:17
10. ZU (Night of the Claustrozombies) [featuring Professor Tara Brabazon & Professor Steve Redhead] 5:32

A rubbery sequencer loop mated with the tritone aspect of a police siren as white noise swelled up heralded the introduction to the album with “Theme From ZU.” Then the hard beat locked with the loop to create a tough EBM vibe that was fairly easy to start reciting the lyrics to Nitzer Ebb’s “Control I’m Here” to for a bar or two. Then an oscillating synth riff redolent of the one in Yello’s “Bostich” interpolated into the mix and we had a desperate and urgent backbone with which to build this album’s theme on. It was inexorable and hurtling forward at reckless speed; giving off the whiff of the inevitable. By its midpoint a series of expansive synth glissandos took flight as soundbites of Professor Tara Brabazon decried the ascent of political appointees lacking Doctoral expertise firmly in charge of curricular development in the modern University environment. Minor key swells of synth in the climax leave little to the imagination regarding the urgency of the album in its first salvo.

Shimmering synths over a hard House beat practically ripped from Blow Monkey’s “Wait” remix played as “Break Their Hearts My Pride And Hope” began. And then the mood turned sinister as Martin James channeled the dark, insinuating delivery of Stephen Mallinder from Cabaret Voltaire’s imperial period. Not so much singing the verse lyrics as snarling them. His vocals treated with chorus to fill the soundstage with a roomful of drooling ogres viewing a treadmill of naive students stepping eagerly into the jaws of education. The music bed dropped out for a singular Martin James to sing the song’s chorus before the song’s inevitable cycle began anew. With hints of Acid in the climactic fade as another soundbite proclaimed “here comes another one.”

The dark heart of the album was the baleful “Human Resource.” A cinematic swell of synths began to curdle and roil on the horizon as the song’s chaotic intro began to cohere into a churning rhythm, strongly redolent of Propaganda’s “Frozen Faces” as the beats came forward with face-slapping intensity. Martin’s voice a model of impersonality as he dispensed with the script that everyone fired from their University position heard as the Post-Brexit environment fostered rising costs and yet another wave of austerity damaging the very structures which hold society aloft. Then the vocoders kicked with the unsettling chorus of “Well how do you feel? Well how do you feel? It’s important to us you understand, we care how you feel.” In a matter that absolutely belied the brutality of what the words were saying. The unempathetic monotone as depicted here merely insult to injury as dispensed by unfeeling cogs in a hostile machine.

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