fantasy of a broken heart’s new EP, Chaos Practitioner, follows their explosive debut album, Feats of Engineering (2024), building on the latter’s kooky but sincere narrative chops while charting new aural directions. The album spotlights the duo’s musical ecosystem with cameos from friends old and new, including Jackson Katz of Brutus VIII, Nick Rattigan of Current Joys, and Kelsea Feder of Blums. Mixed by Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes and This is Lorelei) and mastered by Ruben Radlauer (Model/Actriz), the six-song collection breaks just past 19 minutes, but in that short span guides the listener through a frenetic freefall. The album, as its title suggests, careens between candid reflections on the real world and forays into the haze of daydreams—leaving the border open for exploration. “Is it magic or just mystery?” they ask rhetorically on the EP’s third track, Have a Nice Time Life, a nonsensical-by-design mediation on the danger and promise of getting addicted to the thrill.

fantasy is Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz, who collided in 2017 at the since-shuttered house venue Heck in Bushwick. Immediately bonding over the The Flaming Lips and Fullmetal Alchemist, the two have intermittently lived and worked together since, in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, but mostly on the road in-between, as shifting parts of pirate crews traversing the country and playing in bands Water From Your Eyes, This is Lorelei, among many more.

Their musical project began on these journeys, in moments stolen while wedged up between roommates and band members in overstuffed apartments and the cramped backseats of cars. The creative outlet of two working musicians, fantasy was first just Al and Bailey writing songs, using music to track the vicissitudes of their lives and relationships—with each other and the sprawling matrix of musicians of which they’re a part.

Bailey’s husky baritone whispers, shouts, and croons, Al’s airy vocals twang and soar transcendent, their voices drifting in and out of conversation with each other. A transient dialogue between the two runs through the tracks, often out of sync and existing sometimes in absentia. Chaos Practitioner’s meditative and surreal elements are grounded by driving percussion and shimmering twangs of harp, while ethereal synth layers maintain the dreamlike foundation. The final track, We Confront the Demon in Mysterious Ways, offers a tentative resolution to the struggle, between one’s inner life and the real world, laid out in the preceding tracks, with Al and Bailey recreating a never-ending argument between two lovers, at turns accusatory and defensive. “You wanted real love but you got me instead,” Al sings. “Does it feel good when you hurt me back?” replies Bailey.

Al and Bailey call Chaos Practitioner their “most bedroom collection to date.” It was crafted by close friends in close quarters, on the floors of hotel rooms and living room couches between Brooklyn, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. Though shaped by the surrealist endeavors of 70s prog-rock and late-90s dream pop, fantasy’s output is ultimately tethered to reality, to music as sculpted by years of live performance. A maximalist diatribe, their sound is guided by whatever the fuck they want, but always anchored by the emotional core of the central relationship.

Al says that Bailey is the gas. They’re steering, maybe (sometimes) pressing lightly on the brakes. Indulge in their fantasy, put out your cigarette and pack your bags, or don’t, and come along for the ride.

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Feats of Engineering is styled similarly, plucking the poppiest of melodies as freely as it changes time signatures. Think Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen with its honey-sweet hooks and shifting song structures, Microcastle-era Deerhunter with its driving downbeats and metronomic riffs. Notes, too, of Animal Collective’s cascading synthesizers and energetic vocal cacophony. They have the shameless ambition of an arena band with the musical chops of prog-rock veterans, underscored with a healthy flair for the theatrical.

-Gianni De Falco for Pitchfork

New York DIY fixtures Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz are making whimsical, thrilling, referentially dense guitar music as Fantasy of a Broken Heart. It's like Dickens in Bushwick (complimentary).

-Leah Mandel for i-D

Life-affirming.

-Jon Pareles for The New York Times

feats of engineering packs a prog-rock epic’s bombast into a humble bedroom-pop package, each abrupt structural shift and layer of flaring sonic fantasia guided by a strong sense of play.

-Jordan Darville for The FADER

Prog is perfect for people as thorough as them; infusing pop-inspired hooks leads to a constant push-pull between disorientation and focus that makes each song a little roller coaster. What fantasy of a broken heart do is, above all, thrilling.

-Dev Chodzin for Stereogum

Listening to Fantasy Of A Broken Heart sounds like stepping into the neon-soaked hues of a delirious dreamworld...with its 7/8 switch-ups and dream-pop atmospherics, sound like a pure fantasy that’s been fully realized.

-Grant Sharples for Uproxx 

Combining freak-folk, synth-pop and psych-rock, fantasy of a broken heart revels in buttoning up a truly indescribable yet positively chaotically beautiful sound.

-Matt Mitchell for Paste
8.0 Album Review and Editor’s Pick

fantasy of a broken heart are unafraid to get a little over the top, but their sincerity and keen sense of infectious melody makes it all work, and their zany, technicolor world is only too appealing to get lost in.

-BrooklynVegan

CONTACT:

Label: Tom
US Booking: Greg/Andrew
US Radio: Terrorbird
Press: Tom Avis
EU Booking: Simon