Reifier’s The Unfolding Begins With a Quiet Fire

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There’s a particular kind of electronic music that doesn’t just ask to be listened to, but entered. “The Flame,” the debut single from Reifier, belongs squarely to that lineage: immersive, sensorial, and charged with a quiet menace that seeps in rather than strikes. Built from scorched textures, ritualistic percussion, and Daniela Mandoki’s hypnotic voice, the track feels less like a song than an invocation—one that flickers long after it’s extinguished.

Reifier is Mandoki’s solo project, but calling it simply “electronic” undersells its intent. Her background in theatre composition is audible in the way “The Flame” unfolds with narrative patience. The track doesn’t rush toward a drop or climax; instead, it circles its subject, letting tension accumulate in the negative space. Matches strike. Fire crackles. Rhythm emerges not from a drum machine’s grid, but from physical gestures—combustion as meter. It’s a subtle but effective move, grounding the track’s abstract dread in something unmistakably tactile.

Mandoki’s vocals drift through the mix like smoke, soft yet unnerving. She doesn’t command attention so much as haunt it, repeating phrases with a lulling insistence that gradually becomes oppressive. The melody is spare, almost skeletal, but that restraint gives the song its power. Each harmonic shift feels deliberate, as if the track is constantly deciding whether to reveal itself or stay hidden in shadow.

Thematically, “The Flame” draws from a horror novel about a monster hunting a woman, but the song wisely avoids literal storytelling. Instead, it captures the feeling of pursuit: the anxiety of something unseen but inescapable, the way fear can trail you quietly, burning everything in its wake. Mandoki has described the monster as a metaphor—an embodiment of anxiety or whatever follows you relentlessly—and that ambiguity is where the track thrives. The flame is both external and internal, a threat and a transformation.

What’s striking is how cinematic the song feels without leaning on obvious film-score tropes. There are no swelling strings or melodramatic crescendos. The drama is internal, carried by texture and pacing. Reifier trusts the listener to sit with discomfort, to let the track’s slow burn do its work. In an era where electronic music often equates intensity with maximalism, “The Flame” opts for control, and it’s far more unsettling because of it.

As an entry point into Reifier’s forthcoming EP The Unfolding, the single sets a clear tone. This is music concerned with identity, multiplicity, and transformation—ideas mirrored in the track’s refusal to settle into a fixed form. It’s easy to imagine “The Flame” as one chapter in a larger arc, a threshold moment where something is shed or irrevocably altered. Given that The Unfolding is Mandoki’s first entirely self-authored body of work, the single reads like a declaration of artistic intent: meticulous, personal, and unafraid of darkness.

There are echoes here of artists who treat electronic music as narrative space—Björk’s Vespertine in its intimacy, Holly Herndon’s work in its conceptual rigor—but Reifier doesn’t feel derivative. Her sound is shaped as much by performance and physicality as by synthesis, and that multidisciplinary sensibility gives “The Flame” its distinct character. You can hear the stage in it: the sense that this music is meant to be embodied, not just streamed.

“The Flame” doesn’t explode. It smolders. And in doing so, it announces Reifier as an artist more interested in lasting impact than instant gratification. This is a debut that doesn’t shout for attention—it watches, waits, and follows you home.

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Stream: ‘The Flame’