Static Orders by Nichols+Roark: Review

by admin August 28, 2025

August 28, 2025

London-based electronic duo Nichols+Roark return with their new single, “Static Orders,” a spacious, driving piece that blends progressive, melodic, and organic house with a streak of techno grit. Written out of late-night conversations on modern masculinity, the track wrestles with the silent codes many men internalized growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, those unspoken “orders” that shaped how to act, feel, or not feel at all. Using static-soaked textures and distorted broadcast fragments, the duo translates that inherited silence into sound, layering it with a restless bassline that never quite sits still.

The Radio Edit wastes no time locking into its groove. Its pulsing beat feels cool and commanding, hitting with a grave intensity that drives the track forward. Behind it, an atmospheric haze of synths creates a tense, serious, even intimidating ambience. Meanwhile, a ghostly, distant vocal line drifts in and out, repeating a single phrase like a half-remembered thought. It’s the kind of tune that works just as well on a solitary headphone listen as it does on a packed floor at dawn.

Then there’s the Club Edit, which goes harder and deeper, stretching out past the seven-minute mark. The dancers get pulled into its orbit with hypnotic persistence. The track takes its time, breathing, building, and breaking, before tension turns into release.

Entirely self-produced in their London studio, “Static Orders” shows Nichols+Roark channeling decades of underground experience into a sound. Already championed by names like Joseph Capriati and Township Rebellion, and set to feature in their immersive new label project SHIFT, the single is another step in the duo’s mission to reimagine what electronic music can mean, beyond the dancefloor and straight into lived experience.