BUTCHIE’s ‘Gaslight’ Is An Electro-Pop Marvel

Music has always been a part of Waldman’s life, and through childhood his mother sang, and his trombone-playing father always dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. Meanwhile he himself immersed himself first in 70s pop and then experiemental music, new wave, and synth-pop, performing his poetry and lyrics – sometimes accompanied by a Casiotone – at East Village and Lower East Side open mikes while he was still in high school. He also had a brief stint as backing vocalist and dancer with Tina Benet and the Benetz, at Boybar, before choosing design as his main career.

Music never disappeared from his life, however. Living in Tokyo from 1986 to 1990 saw Waldman write and record four songs with Soichi Terada; sadly those tapes are now lost to time. His later work included NOOKA, a fashion brand carried in museum shops around the world and once worn by Prince. Waldman remains designing and teaches innovation at a university, but he’s decided it’s now time to introduce BUTCHIE to the world.

Waldman returned to songwriting back in 2024, when, while cleaning out an apartment in New York, following the end of a 24 year relationship, he found some old poetry and lyrics. From there he enlisted the talents of producer Peter Cattermoul, of Teleman, and together they began developing material from that archive.’Gaslight’, from his album, ‘EVERPRESENCE‘, started September 2025, initially as a personal response to being gaslit by someone he loved. The repeated “gaslight carousel” image captures the idea of motion without progress, while lines like “Global gaslight generation” and “Nostalgia’s political masturbation” push the subject from intimate experience into public life. Cattermoul encouraged Waldman to treat the track as a single after he initially thought it was too strange for that role. Sonically BUTCHIE draws on 70s and 80s electronic music and disco, along with clear inspiration from hyper-pop and electroclash.

The music video for ‘Gaslight’, directed and CG-designed by Kota Kawamura, keeps BUTCHIE as its focus, while visual disruptions unfold around him, reflecting the chaos and stalled movement at the centre of the song. Shot in real time in an LED-lined studio, it incorporates spinning graphics, shifting walls of imagery and neon-immersed scenes, ensuring the environment is kept in motion around him. Moments of ironic dancing cut against the seriousness of the subject, reflecting BUTCHIE’s view that gaslighting receives too little in-depth scrutiny with regard to personal and public interactions.

Watch the music video for ‘Gaslight’ below, and find out more about BUTCHIE and his music online on his official website, Instagram, and Spotify.