Weval - Remember (2LP)

Weval’s third album, Remember, lands like a half-remembered dream you’re keen to fall back into. The Amsterdam duo of Harm Coolen and Merijn Scholte Albers have always lived in that twilight zone between club heat and headphones introspection, but this one leans hard into the fog of memory and how it warps truth. They’ve said they were chasing the feel of early influences from the 90s and 2000s, and you can hear that in the dusty breaks, the woozy hooks and those vocals that melt into the synths rather than sitting on top. It’s nostalgic, though not in a cringey retro way. More like finding an old MiniDV tape and realising your past had better colour than you thought.

The production is gorgeously tactile. Weval are studio rats in the best sense, and Remember feels performed rather than programmed. Saturated drum loops push against rubbery basslines, and little guitar flecks or percussive taps appear like flickers at the edge of your vision. Their voices are often pitched or layered into wordless sighs, so they become another texture inside the mix. You can dance to a lot of this, but the record rewards a sit-down listen too. It’s the sort of album you put on as the sun drops, and by track three the room’s changed temperature.

A few cuts have already stuck with fans. Don’t Lose Time is a standout, a slow-blooming pulse that keeps tugging at the snare just off centre, like your memory glitching in time with the kick. Is That How You Feel It might be the album’s cheekiest moment, a question framed as a hook, with a lead line that squirms around the beat and then locks in for the chorus. All Alone juggles melancholy and lift, the kind of bittersweet that Weval do so well. They aren’t afraid of space either. When the drums drop away you’re left with pads that feel like the air thickening, and then they bring the rhythm back in with just enough swing to make the floor tilt under you.

Context helps. The duo’s self-titled 2016 debut and 2019’s The Weight built them a reputation for melodic, emotionally charged electronics, and Remember sharpens that identity. The sound is more confident. They lean into grit when they need to, but they also let the synths breathe. Nothing is showy for the sake of it. Even the peak moments feel earned. You get the sense they’re playing with the idea of memory in the structure of the songs, not just in the tones. Little motifs return a few tracks later, flipped or blurred, so your ear catches a shadow of something you heard before and your brain does the rest.

It’s easy to picture this translating to their live show, where they’ve long blended club precision with human looseness. The record is sequenced with flow in mind, so it feels like a set that knows when to hold tension and when to let it go. That craft is part of why the album sat well with electronic heads and more indie-leaning listeners. It’s a bridge record, built with care.

If you’re hunting for Remember on wax, you’re in luck. The Weval vinyl edition brings out the low-end warmth and that shimmering midrange where their vocals and synths meet. It’s the copy I keep recommending when someone wanders into a Melbourne record store asking what new electronic album has real staying power. And if you prefer to buy Weval records online, you’ll find plenty of stock floating around, along with earlier Weval albums on vinyl for a neat shelf run. For those crate-digging their way through vinyl records Australia wide, this one’s an easy sell. It plays beautifully front to back, and the artwork makes sense of the music before the needle even drops.

Remember doesn’t reinvent Weval so much as distil them. It’s a confident, deeply listenable chapter that sits alongside their best work and hints at more. The hooks are subtle, the grooves are patient, and the mood lingers long after the last track fades. Put it on during a late drive or pre-dawn tidy-up and see how your own memories start colouring in the spaces. That’s the magic here. The album invites you to fill the gaps, and then it quietly rearranges the furniture in your head. If you were waiting for the right moment to pick up Remember vinyl, this is it.