I remember this feeling: you stand on the top floor, look at Manhattan from above – and for a second it seems that the whole city is in your hands. And a moment later, something completely different covers you – a light, anxious dizziness from the height you have reached. It is about this feeling – the new album of the New York duo BUNNY X, represented by Abigail Gordon and Jenny Bates, who possess a rare gift of transforming nostalgia into exquisite electronic poetry. On August 14, 2026, their third full-length album “Love on a High Floor” was released on the Aztec Records label – on all digital platforms, Bandcamp, as well as on vinyl, cassettes, and CD.
If the debut “Young & In Love” (2021) and the subsequent “Love Minus 80” (2023) explored youthful innocence, the romance of first meetings, and midnight escapes, the new work offers growing up. The same characters have grown up, dressed in strict suits with wide shoulders, and climbed to the upper floors of the financial Olympus. However, behind the shine of 1980s Wall Street, the rustle of silk, and panoramic views of nighttime New York hides the main question: what do our dreams turn into when they finally come true? “Love on a High Floor” brings the duo’s signature style to perfection, mixed on Italo-disco and synthwave with references to Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and early Madonna. The album’s sound – a polished “Officewave” – was created with the participation of long-time collaborators of the band SelloRekt / LA Dreams, Don Dellpiero, Gosteffects and Grammy Award-winning sound engineer Tony Lake. Out of eleven tracks on the album, these key stops, in my opinion, build the dramaturgy of this musical ascent.
The album opens with the track “Starting Dreams” – a ringing, upward-aspiring synth passage, resembling the morning hum of a metropolis. A pulsating bass sets the pace for the workday, while transparent keyboards paint an image of the sun refracting in the windows of skyscrapers. The voice does not yet know fatigue – only ambition. This is a musical illustration of pristine hope with which the conquest of a big city begins: the phone rings, the workday begins, and in this early delight there is not yet a drop of doubt. However, by the third track, “One Touch”, the delight already acquires an emotional shade. In the recording, a transition occurs from cold determination to a flash of feelings. The texture of the sound becomes softer and more intimate: a dense analog bass intertwines with velvet vocals. “One Touch” conveys the moment when, in the dry space of open-plan offices and documents, electricity arises between two people. A flash of an office romance is described with aesthetic understatement; it reminded me of the best pop songs of the eighties.
The workday is over, but on the track “After Hours”, the real plot is just beginning. Slowing the pace down, a thick and cinematic track goes into the atmosphere of semi-shadow cocktail bars. Soft drum machines and smoky synth pads recreate the aesthetics of evening relaxation, when a glass of bourbon and muted light help to shed the mask of a corporate functionary. The retrowave aesthetic of BUNNY X sounds convincing – the synthesizers truly live in the 80s. With “Take Me Away”, the rhythm gathers strength again, but now in the dynamics of a night escape. Rapid synth arpeggios imitate streetlight lights flying past the window of a yellow New York taxi. This is an impulse track expressing a passionate desire to break out of the golden cage of high performance indicators and status for at least one night.
The emotional climax of the album awaits the listener on the title track “Love On A High Floor”. The sonic space expands to the scale of a luxury penthouse. Dense, monumental production emphasizes the contrast between external chic and internal vulnerability. Abigail and Jenny sing about love at a bird’s-eye view – where the air is cleaner, but colder, and if the glass walls crack, you will have to fall all the way to the bottom. Closer to the finale, in “Business Trip”, the irony becomes clear: far from the office and familiar decorations of success, it is easier to admit to yourself what you really want. The track recreates a cinematic road aesthetic: flickering runway lights, semi-empty airport terminals, and reflections by a hotel window in a foreign metropolis. I like that BUNNY X presented it as an elegant musical sketch about life on the move, where the romance of city lights intertwines with the sadness of constant business trips. The final chord of the album, “Lovers”, removes the masks of corporate gloss. A bright, elevated song returns the characters to the main thing – to sincere feelings, which turn out to be stronger than the cold shine of any glass towers.
“Love on a High Floor” is more than a stylization of a bygone era. BUNNY X managed to record a mature, dramatic album about the price of success – about what happens to a dream when it finally comes true. Listening to it, and especially its finale, I caught myself thinking that all this shine and glass chic were needed only to eventually return to the ordinary and warm – to those you love. Probably, that’s how it works: the higher the floor, the clearer you can see what really matters.
Published in partnership with SubmitHub
