In an exclusive presentation before it goes on general release, GCN is delighted to share the haunting new song by queer artists The Late David Turpin and Jaime Nanci.

The atmospheric musical deep dive, ‘Unsolved Mystery’ will be released tomorrow across all audio streams. It’s taken from Turpin’s forthcoming album Romances, a song cycle made in collaboration with ten lead vocalists and over sixty musicians, producers and artists.

The woozily romantic epic is sung by queer jazz artiste Jaime Nanci and co-produced with Stephen Shannon. It is named after the classic television series Unsolved Mysteries.

The song is described as a “Twin Peaks-ready ballad…that imagines what it might be like to disappear before one’s own eyes.” Turpin’s inspiration for the song was watching missing persons cases on the television show and imagining they had absconded to a more welcoming place. While noting that the reality was likely very different, ‘Unsolved Mystery’ makes that place a reality for its duration.

As well creating his own brand of dream pop, David Turpin is also an accomplished screenwriter, having scripted the Irish horror film The Lodgers. Shot on location in the atmospheric surrounds of Loftus Hall, the film was about a family curse which confined orphaned twins to their home, in punishment for their ancestors’ sins.

In an interview with GCN at the time, Turpin said: “For me, the gothic has always been a refuge and an outlet. As an obviously gay adolescent in Catholic boys’ school, I was drawn to it for the way in which it created a space for the taboo and the unspeakable. Now, as an adult, I still find myself turning to the gothic as a language of metaphor to talk about things – identity, sexuality, family – that are often too difficult, or too frightening, to talk about in literal terms.”