Los Angeles synthpop producer Danz CM released the double single “A Violent Power” and “Bontempi Pop 3” on 28 August 2026 through Channel 9 Records, the label she founded and still runs. The two songs run 4:15 and 3:15, are digital only, and were both built on vintage hardware rather than software instruments.

The release arrives six months after “MYTHS”, the instrumental album she issued in February 2026, and points at a larger record to come. Announcing the two tracks on Instagram, Danielle Johnson wrote: “Two bangers and a double single of sorts. You can only assume this means one thing: yes, that a greater body of work is on the horizon.”

How the two Danz CM tracks differ

“A Violent Power” was constructed entirely from analogue synthesizers and runs on a steady new-wave pulse, with bass and keyboard lines locking into a dance tempo. The lyric deals with giving in to an emotion strong enough to override judgment, and the arrangement tightens around that idea as it goes.

“Bontempi Pop 3” takes the opposite route. A breakbeat carries trip-hop weight underneath an Italian Bontempi toy organ, whose chirps and squeaks run across the track from start to finish. The subject is time and the wish to slow its passing by staying inside the present moment. Live guitars, acoustic drums, motorik rhythms and layered vocals appear across both recordings alongside the synthesizer banks.

About Danz CM

Danz CM is the recording name of Danielle Johnson, born on 20 February 1989 and raised in New York’s Catskill Mountains, now based in Los Angeles. She works as a producer, songwriter, composer, singer and graphic designer, and handles writing, production, mixing and art direction for her own releases.

Johnson began releasing music in 2010 under the name Computer Magic, taken from a line of Viv Savage dialogue in “This Is Spinal Tap”. The early self-released records “Spectro”, “Hiding From Our Time” and “Get a Job” appeared in 2010 and 2011, followed by “Electronic Fences” on White Iris in 2011, “Orion” on Kitsuné in 2012 and the “A Million Years / Another Science” single on Modern Records in 2013. Her music found an audience in Japan, where it was used in campaigns for Panasonic and Kewpie Mayo.

In 2015 she started her own label, Channel 9 Records, initially in New York and funded with licensing income, and released the Computer Magic album “Davos” on it that year. The EP “Obscure but Visible” followed on 7 October 2016, the side project Cody & Danz with Cody Crump issued the EP “Only the Hits” on 14 July 2017, and the rarities compilation “Super Rare” arrived on 15 December 2017. The Computer Magic album “Danz” came out in 2018.

In August 2020 she retired the Computer Magic name and became Danz CM. The first Danz CM album, “The Absurdity of Human Existence”, was released in 2021, trailed by the single “Idea of You” in December 2020 and by “Domino”, “Something More” and “I Don’t Need a Hero” in early 2021. “Berlin Tokyo Shopping Mall Elevator” followed in 2023, the krautrock-leaning “LÄRM! EP” in 2025 and the instrumental “MYTHS” in February 2026. She has also written for film, scoring “While Mortals Sleep” in 2022 and Gary Hustwit’s New York subway map documentary “The Map”, whose soundtrack Channel 9 issued in 2024.

Outside her own catalogue she founded the print magazine, website and podcast Synth History in 2020, remixed Ladytron‘s “Tower of Glass”, and has toured in support of LCD Soundsystem and Ladytron. Channel 9 Records has been based in Los Angeles since 2021.

“A Violent Power” and “Bontempi Pop 3” are the first new Danz CM songs since “MYTHS”. No title or date has been announced for the larger release she referred to.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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