It’s been nearly two decades since cut.rate.box recorded new music, but they’re back—angrier, sharper, and more relevant than ever. The electronic project returned on Friday with a new single called “Reel Life” that marks the band’s first new material in 20 years.
“Reel Life” is a dark, industrial thumper shaped by knob-twisting electronics and mostly spoken-word vocals. It arrives with a compelling music video built from digitally manipulated footage of social media influencers and a synthetic preacher who delivers a sermon cobbled together from corrupted scripture and data-driven dogma. It’s a searing statement on modern identity, control, and the propaganda loops we feed ourselves in the algorithmic age.
Here’s what the Bandcamp notes say about the new song:
The new single ‘Reel Life’ marks the powerful rebirth of CUT.RATE.BOX. It offers a dark and unflinching reflection of our modern age: overstimulated, algorithmically manipulated, and emotionally anesthetized. Musically, the track is a tense fusion of dense electronic punk, EBM rhythms, and synthpop unease—drawing on influences like Cabaret Voltaire, Wire, and Brian Eno, while embracing modern production and generative tools as instruments of expression, not novelty.
Who is cut.rate.box?
If you were a regular in dark electronic circles during the late ’90s and early 2000s, you should know cut.rate.box. Founded by Gregg Wygonik in Florida in 1989, the project carved out a niche with its blend of emotional synthpop, EBM textures, and charged lyrics. Over the years, cut.rate.box released a string of albums—including New Religion (2000), which featured guests such as Stefan Netschio (Beborn Beton), Kurt Harland (Information Society), and Daniel Myer (Haujobb). Their 2001 album Dataseed is home to one of cut.rate.box’s best-known tracks, “Ego.”
Wygonik relocated several times over the years, eventually landing in New Orleans. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and another personal tragedy upended his life. He moved to Austin and funneled his creative energy into a collection of raw, mostly instrumental tracks that became Xenophobe. Although the album wasn’t released until 2017, its songs were written in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
Though he stopped making music as cut.rate.box, Wygonik stayed active behind the scenes, developing hardware and modular synths and contributing to the VCV Rack ecosystem. He also worked professionally as a product designer at tech giants like Microsoft and Meta, giving him a front-row seat to the digital transformations he critiques through his music.
First single from forthcoming EP Luxury Anxiety
At the start of this year, Wygonik decided: “It is time.” He began writing and recording new cut.rate.box material.
“Reel Life” is the first taste of Luxury Anxiety, a new EP due out in 2025. The new material returns to his earliest musical roots, bringing a punk ethos—driving minimalism and scathing lyrical takes on the current state of the world—to the electro-pop-industrial sound cut.rate.box is known for.
The EP will include remixes by longtime friends of the project and will be released by Alfa Matrix, the Belgium-based label known for championing dark electronic music from acts like Aiboforcen, Implant, Llumen, and more..
