Some artists write songs. Others build atmospheres. West Wickhams build entire worlds. With their haunting and hypnotic five track EP Sakura, released on November 21, 2025, the duo of Jon Othello and Elle Flores step deeper into their signature lo fi post punk bedroom synth pop dreamscape, offering an experience that feels like a walk through a ghost lit garden where cherry blossoms drift through neon fog. It is a record shaped by philosophy, myth, and mood, but carried by the unmistakable pulse of their strange, seductive sonic universe.
At the heart of Sakura is the Japanese concept of mono no aware, often translated as the pathos of things. It is a way of seeing beauty precisely because it is fleeting, of understanding that everything meaningful exists only for a moment before dissolving. Cherry blossoms are the most iconic symbol of this idea, blooming brilliantly and briefly, reminding all who witness them of life’s fragile radiance. West Wickhams take this centuries old philosophy and breathe it into a modern shadow world of synth textures, post punk edges, dream pop melancholia, and velvet toned gloom. The result is an EP that feels like it hangs suspended between eras, between realities, and between states of being.
Up to the Old Tricks opens the EP with a jittery pulse, a blend of lo fi charm and dark pop swagger. The track moves like a flickering film reel, driven by minimalist percussion and spectral synth lines that dissolve and reform in unexpected patterns. Jon Othello’s vocal delivery is cool and distant, as though broadcast from another dimension, while Elle Flores’s atmospheric touches fill the edges with soft static and ghostly shimmer. Lyrically, the song dances between nostalgia and danger, hinting at cycles we fall back into even when we know better. Its energy mirrors the EP’s central theme: the beauty of returning to something familiar even when it carries the taste of endings.
Ice Block follows with a colder, sharper emotional temperature. The track glides on crisp electronic rhythms and frosted synth textures, creating an icy sonic atmosphere that feels both detached and deeply vulnerable. Flores’s melodies float like frozen petals caught in winter wind, fragile but mesmerizing. There is a sense of longing beneath the surface, a slow thaw of emotion breaking through the song’s chill exterior. Ice Block evokes the delicate contrast between coldness and warmth, between walls built and walls melting. It is introspective but stylish, bleak but strangely comforting.
As the Camera Shuts leans into cinematic tension. The beat simmers under layers of dreamlike distortion, creating a sense of motion as if the listener is moving through a memory while the frame tightens around them. The title evokes snapshots, glimpses, endings captured at the last second before they vanish. West Wickhams excel at turning imagery into sound, and here they create a sonic landscape that feels like photographic melancholy. Each lyric feels like a caption on a fading Polaroid. The track’s hazy, noir tinted production underscores their love for gothic novels, forgotten stories, and the eeriness of still moments.
EQ The Viper injects heat back into the EP with a slithering groove and sharp post punk undercurrents. It is dynamic, rhythmic, and energizing, channeling their influences from dark punk, gothic poetry, and abstract art. The bassline creeps and curls like the track’s namesake while angular guitar textures slice through the haze. There is mischief and menace in the song’s movement, echoing the duo’s identity as an imagined rival gang to the Bromley Contingent. EQ The Viper feels like a stylish threat wrapped in reverb, unpredictable and entirely addictive.
Save Yourselves closes the EP with a slow burning, atmospheric exhale. The track blends swirling synth beds, faint echoes, and melancholic melodic lines into something ethereal and contemplative. It is a song about endings and awakenings, drifting through themes of loss, urgency, and quiet revelation. In the context of mono no aware, Save Yourselves becomes a final reflection: a reminder that all beautiful things fade, and that the knowledge of impermanence can inspire action rather than despair. The track leaves listeners standing beneath the falling petals, suspended between acceptance and longing.
Sakura captures the full spectrum of West Wickhams’ creativity. They draw inspiration not only from Japanese symbolism and fleeting beauty, but from the entire strange constellation of influences that shape their artistic identity. Mary Shelley’s gothic imagination, Whitby Abbey’s eerie majesty, pipe organs, ancient myths, misty autumn nights, optical illusions, Edgar Allan Poe’s psychological shadows, Daphne du Maurier’s ghostly atmospheres, and Andy Warhol’s pop art coolness all flicker across the EP like subtle apparitions. Their world is strange, poetic, and unapologetically niche — and Sakura might be their most distilled expression of it yet.
Their origins on the island of Tresco in the Isles of Scilly, a place they describe as the island of lost souls, can be felt in the windswept melancholy of the EP. Their relocation to Richmond, where creatures rule, adds a surreal suburban otherness to their sound. Together, these environments create a backdrop where beauty and eeriness coexist.
Sakura is not just an EP. It is a cinematic moodboard, a philosophical reflection, a dreamy descent into the fragile and the fleeting. West Wickhams invite listeners to walk through their petals and their shadows, to sit with the beautiful sadness of things that bloom only briefly, and to revel in the fact that even the most ephemeral moments can feel eternal when captured in sound.
