Men With Secrets
Men With Secrets
Men With Secrets is the Italian gothic trio led by Donato Dozzy, alongside Lino Monaco and Nicola Buono (also known as Retina.it). The three first collaborated under the name Le Officine Di Efesto, releasing left-field techno on Dozzy’s Spazio Disponibile before discovering a shared devotion to classic post-punk, minimal wave, and synthpop. What began as an unexpected detour became something more deliberate: a project built around structured songwriting, baritone vocals, and stripped-down drum machines—icy synths, shuddering basslines, and melodies that feel unearthed from another era.
Though their debut album Psycho Romance (2020) on Bunker Records sounded like a lost European darkwave artifact from 1982, it was entirely new—meticulously written and produced by the trio. The name itself, borrowed from early New York electronic pioneer Richard Bone, hints at their lineage. Echoes of Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, New Order, and Dopplereffekt can be felt, but never as imitation. The music balances tongue-in-cheek self-awareness with deadly serious execution: analog warmth, hard-hitting drums, soaring synth lines, and emotionally exposed, apocalyptic vocals that blur the boundary between goth club and underground techno floor.
Their forthcoming LP Sand Clock, out mid-April on Cititrax, feels like their most personal statement yet. Leaning more directly into the melodic clarity of late-80s and early-90s darkwave and synth-driven pop, the record refines their balance between austerity and hook. There is a heightened romanticism here—anthemic yet restrained, intimate yet expansive—where shadowed dance floors, solitary headphone listening, and a distinctly European melancholy converge into something both timeless and immediate.