Tag: experimental

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Music

Loraine James, Miho Hatori – Flatline

Created during a period of internal struggle and shifting self-perception, Loraine James’ new album Detached From The Rest Of You explores a more direct and vocal-led approach. The experience of producing 2025’s Clandestine EP with singer Anysia Kym opened up a more pop-focused framework, helping her shape her ideas into tighter song structures without losing the fragility and experimentation that defines her work, while also opening her up to collaboration more than ever before, with guests on the LP including Sydney Spann, Low’s Alan Sparrowhawk and Miho Hatori on the standout Flatline.

https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/album/detached-from-the-rest-of-you

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Music

Nalan – Everything was Easy in 2009

Berlin-based artist Nalan returns with 2009, her first album since 2022’s I’m Good. Out last month on Mansions and Millions, 2009 was written and recorded between Berlin and Istanbul and leans heavily into the reflective power of nostalgia, reshaping the late-2000s into something both sentimental and slightly distorted though a compelling indie-pop lens.

https://nalan.bandcamp.com/album/2009

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Music

Voice Actor, Coni, Rune Kielsgaard – Life’s a mess

I’m not even going to attempt to interpret the cryptic madness of the Bandcamp description of this track, but any new material from Voice Actor is very welcome. Hopefully this is part of a wider forthcoming project… but who knows.

https://stroomtv.bandcamp.com/track/lifes-a-mess

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Music

More Eaze – distance

more eaze is the moniker of Brooklyn-based composer, orchestrator, and multi-instrumentalist, mari rubio, and her new album sentence structure in the country is a collection of compositions across ambient and experimental pop, each beautifully realised, self-contained worlds, with influences stretching from country to jazz. The album’s compositions evolved over a number of years, with each updated version informed by both the context of rubio’s performances and the musicians she chose to create them with.

https://moreeaze.bandcamp.com/album/sentence-structure-in-the-country

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Music

OHYUNG – Nevada

Bruce Springsteen had his Nebraska, a bare-bones, notably bleaker record. OHYUNG now has her IOWA; stripped-down and self-produced. Ghostly echoes, mouth sounds, simulated tape hiss, late night gloom. Though beautiful, there’s an illness-of-ease to the music, a fog of threat, numerous points of rupture in otherwise serene tracks, massive subwoofer activations that could be heaven’s kick drum or the slam of a bomb. Sampled choirs in rapture, a fine line between terror and reverence. Happy Friday!

https://ohyung.bandcamp.com/album/iowa

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Music

Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske – Impatience, Magma

Caterina Barbieri and Bendik Giske’s collaborative project started during an artistic residency in Milan’s ICA in 2021, by invitation of Swiss artist and curator Jan Vorisek. This meeting, and the preceding closure of sites for cultural exchange, made their work together “feel like springtime” according to Barbieri. Throughout the tour, they continued to develop material live, and their album, At Source, feels true to that ever-evolving process of creation. Impatience, Magma feels like the centrepiece of this extraordinary EP, glowing and languorous, with Giske’s saxophone at its most affecting.

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Music

Mandy, Indiana – Life Hex

I really didn’t get on with Mandy, Indiana” celebrated debut i’ve seen a way, at all, despite multiple listens and various people telling me how brilliant it was. Their new album URGH, however, has definitely got me. Written during a residency outside Leeds and completed between Berlin and Manchester – with the band working through ongoing some pretty significant health issues at the time – URGH moves between industrial pressure, fractured club textures and metal (probably?), creating moments that feel both at times deeply claustrophobic, at others spacious yet still uneasy. But most prominently of all, it’s ragey – in a very satisfying way.

https://mandyindiana.bandcamp.com/album/urgh

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Music

Maria BC – Night & day

Maria BC’s third studio album Marathon lands at the end of the month, and Night & day is the second single: a haunting, reflective experimental folk song. The album itself is billed to deal with themes of “resistance, environmental ruin, personal disruptions and destruction”, which feels very 2026.

https://mariabc.bandcamp.com/album/marathon

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Music

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – Thoughts On The Future

Kaitlyn’s Aurelia Smith’s last album GUSH was one of the best albums of the year, and didn’t get nearly enough love in the end of year list, except mine of course. There’s a risk new EP Thoughts On The Future will also get a bit lost as it came out just before Christmas when no-one’s really paying attention, but it shouldn’t. Entirely instrumental, and echoing artists like Kelly Moran in its use of slowly evolving rhythmic repetition, Smith described it as “a contemplative body of work that examines what grief does to the body and the mind – the necessary disembodiment & cocooning — how it suspends us, how it empties us, and how it quietly begins to rebuild us in its own time.”

https://kaitlynaureliasmith.bandcamp.com/album/thoughts-on-the-future

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Ethel Cain – Punish

And so begins the inevitable march of posting all the music from 2025 that I missed, starting with this beautiful, devastating track from Ethel Cain’s album Perverts. It doesn’t really do justice to listen to it in isolation from the rest of the album, but it is an undoubted highlight – if a ‘highlight’ can make you want to curl into a mournful little ball and never go outside again. Perverts is one of the bleakest, most sorrowful albums of the year, and I can’t stop listening to it.

https://ethelcain.ffm.to/perverts