Listen to Out’s Exclusive Premiere of TR/ST’s 'Grouch'

Queer electronica wizard TR/ST, the artist behind some of your favorite dark synthy club tracks, is back with a new album, The Destroyer, this April. Ahead of the release he's sharing a new track exclusively with Out. "Grouch" bridges 80s drama and sound with a contemporary dream pop sensibility courtesy of TR/ST's Robert Alfons.

"I really wanted this song to convey a feeling of liberation and decadence," Alfons tells Out. "Similar to my experience when I first heard Pet Shop Boys' Very album. Such emotion and drama. Even the CD's orange jewel case had bumps on it, so sensual."

Alfons' frequent collaborator Maya Postepski, who helped write and produce "Grouch," says the song "makes me reminisce those awkward teenage romances, basement video games with the lights off, blasting music and escaping into [alternate] realities while being secretly in love with someone you were told not to."

Listen to Out's exclusive premiere of TR/ST's "Grouch" below.

TR/ST's new album The Destroyer is out April 19. "When I was a child, making music was a necessity for me in order to feel sane," Alfons said in a statement. "It was a way to understand and overcome blockages I couldn't necessarily define. And in a way this album was a return to that, to letting the music guide my growth, rather than vice versa."

Much of the album was inspired by Los Angeles. "It's this huge, polarized, frantic place, bursting with sound," Alfons explains. "But it can also be lonely and alienating. In a way, that contrast became a kind of inspiration for the new work."

TR/ST will release a follow up record, The Destroyer-2, this November.

RELATED | TR/ST's 'Destroyer' Is An Emotional Roller Coaster