Menu

Tony D'Amico

About Tony D'Amico

https://psychotropicwonderland.com

Posts by Tony D'Amico:

a1712944433_16

OHYUNG, “You Are Always On My Mind” (NNA Tapes, 2025)

,

This is not my first exposure to this shapeshifting project from Brooklyn-based film composer Lia Ouyang Rusli, but it may as well be, as this inspired outsider pop album bears little resemblance to the understated ambiance of 2022’s imagine naked! or its more noise-damaged and hip-hop-inspired predecessors. OHYUNG envisioned the album’s overarching theme as “my trans self and my former self in conversation, from both perspectives,” but the stylistic direction is also steered quite a bit by her deep fondness for inventively repurposing “generic string loops” found in online sample packs, which instills many of these songs with a sense of wide-eyed classic pop wonder. Curiously unmentioned, however, is an equal fondness for big, stomping drum machine beats that sound lovingly inspired by Janet Jackson’s “Nasty” era. That alone is a winning combination, but OHYUNG further ices that cake with quite a few great hooks as well.

The piece that best exemplifies OHYUNG’s newly revealed pop genius is “i swear that i could die rn,” which combines a muscular drum machine stomp with a cool seesawing synth motif and a bittersweetly beautiful vocal melody. Despite its ostensibly dark title, it is a wonderfully poignant and sweet pop song, which makes sense as the piece was inspired by warm memories of past raves and the “feeling that I could die at this moment and be happy.” I was also delighted by the recurring inscrutable vocal sample and the seamless way that the choruses become warmer and more harmonically rich.

Notably, there is a similarly stellar epilogue near the end of the album, as “years ago,” as big, booming drums and a swooningly lovely string loop provide the backdrop for moving lyrical nods to earlier moments in both the album and Lia’s own life (her previous self being “always on her mind,” of course). Elsewhere, I was similarly impressed with the lush and dreamy “dancing on the soft knife,” which could pass for an unusually wild and great Seefeel remix if the spoken word vocals were excised. “No Good” is yet another favorite, as a big driving beat propels another great vocal hook that is beautifully enhanced with layered strings and cool synth flourishes.

The remainder of the album is a bit more eclectic, but OHYUNG’s inspiration remains quite strong throughout her various stylistic detours. For example, “5 strings {lake}” features some guest verses from rapper j. fisher over skittering drums and a lush ascending string motif that favorably calls to mind Gang Star’s iconic “Moment of Truth.” Elsewhere, the opening “you are always on my mind” has more of a muscular and driving rock groove, but the timing of the string loops gives it a wonderfully swirling, delirious, and off-kilter feel (and the twinkling piano crescendo is quite nice as well).

There is also an autotuned nod to contemporary R&B ( “im holding close the memory fades”) and an autotuned lovesick reverie (“id rather be a ghost by your side than enter heaven without you”) as well as a few pleasant but insubstantial interludes. None of them quite recapture the magic of the album’s highlights, but most of them feature a strong enough idea at their heart to justify their inclusion (like the squiggly synth motif in the closing “im coming towards you”).

That said, the overall arc of the album is quite an effective one and there are always enough weird touches in the periphery to ensure that this is an immersive headphone album from start to finish. Unsurprisingly, I would have been perfectly happy with some good immersive headphone psychedelia, but that aspect pales in comparison to the soul, poetry, and melodicism of OHYUNG’s autobiographical songcraft. Unsurprisingly, I have already seen this album hailed as one of the year’s finest and I agree wholeheartedly, but it is also a massive creative leap forward for OHYUNG in general.

Listen here.

a1711054765_16

Manslaughter 777, “God’s World” (Thrill Jockey, 2025)

,

I was a big fan of the 2021 debut from this duo of drummers Lee Buford (The Body) and Zac Jones (Braveyoung/MSC), but that definitely did not stop me from being somewhat blindsided by this wilder and more eclectic follow up. In fact, Jones himself aptly describes God’s World as ”maybe the craziest record I’ve ever worked on” and further notes that the duo set out to record music that “people could play at parties.” Notably, that party rockin’ mindset did not steer the duo away from their earlier Godflesh-adjacent post-industrial heaviness all that much, but those sludgier, more industrial sounds now coexist with a more playful and vivid array of other influences ranging from jungle to gamelan to hip-hop to rocksteady. While I have historically been frequently annoyed by artists who make aggressive genre-slicing a central feature of their art, Manslaughter 777 masterfully make that approach feel like a refreshing delight, as this album feels like a dangerously out-of-control party train from start to finish.

The album opens in appropriately killer fashion with “I Do Not Believe in Art,” which quickly locks into an insistent kick drum throb with a cool acid bass line and a ghostly vocal hook. It is great while it lasts, but it soon transforms into an equally cool breakbeat surprise with a chopped soul diva hook and stuttering rap fragments. Things only get more wild and festive from there, as the following “Power In the Blood” sounds like it could be an unhinged Meat Beat Manifesto remix of a Snap! or C&C Music Factory hit (aside from the blown-out sludgy outro featuring an amusing Xanadu-style double clap). Next, “Child Of” evokes straight-up ‘90s R&B aside from a digitally mangled melodic hook that sounds like it could have been plucked from an early Severed Heads album, while “Luv” is a left-field reimagining of Dennis Brown’s “Money In My Pocket” that unexpectedly blossoms into a noisy crescendo of smoldering noise wreckage, deep bass, and skittering drums. The first side of the album then concludes with a piece that sounds like a roiling industrial deconstruction of an angelic New Age vocal album.

Despite that improbable array of delights and surprises, most of my favorite pieces fall on the album’s more uneven second half. I cannot say I love the dancehall-rooted “Silk Barricade” all that much, but the “every night is a soundclash” refrain summarizes the album’s vision nicely and the final minutes evoke a solid dubbed-out Godflesh dirge. The following “Pulling A Truck Up a Hill,” however, unleashes an absolutely mesmerizing Afro-Latin groove that sounds like a deep psych-minded gamelan ensemble. Sadly, it only lasts for two minutes, as it could have easily been a mindblowing 20-minute juggernaut. The same is true of “Clipped and 15 (Extended),” as a muscular breakbeat is gradually enhanced with layers of chopped up and trippy sounds before unexpectedly resolving into a heavy ritualistic drone outro. Again, I would love to hear an even more extended version someday, but at least this one clocked in at a relatively substantial five minutes. Between those two bangers lies yet another killer piece, as “Die In The Night” sounds like it could be a great contemporary Muslimgauze remix. The album then closes with a brief but banging hip-hop groove/victory lap (the “can I breathe now?” sample being an especially inspired choice). 

Notably, the entire wild ride only lasts about thirty minutes, but that brevity is 100% justified by the album’s “all killer, no filler” lineup of instantly gratifying delights, as I imagine a longer album would probably get a bit numbing. That said, I would love to hear Buford and Jones (and producer Seth Manchester) try their hand at some more longform psych excursions some day, as they definitely know how to keep a killer groove rolling and have wonderful taste in samples and dubby studio flourishes, but this raucous party is definitely not the place for something like that (and no one wants to ruin a party). At its best (which is most of the time), God’s World feels like an impossibly cool and freewheeling soundclash or pirate radio transmission (an impression that is nicely enhanced by the album’s bootleg-style artwork).  

Listen here.  

a3635305629_16

Disinblud (Smugglers Way, 2025)

, ,

This is the debut full-length from the duo of Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith, who previously collaborated on a single back in 2021. Notably, I was a big fan of Nayar’s early guitar-centric releases (Our Hands Across The Dusk and Fragments), but she lost me a bit with the “maximalist synths, sub-bass, and Amen breaks” of her 2022 breakout album Heaven Come Crashing (I’m definitely in the minority on that one). This is my first encounter with Nina Keith, however, and it definitely will not be the last.

Notably, being a self-taught neoclassical composer who dropped out of high school while wrestling with Tourette’s syndrome is probably the least interesting aspect of Keith’s life, as her debut album MARANSATI 19111 explored a “a personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents.” Much of that personal history remains an enigma, but EMDR therapy and the unsolved “Boy in the Box” murder both loom quite large in it. Given all of that, I could not have begun to guess what a shared vision between two such artists might sound like, but Disinblud eliminates the need for speculation, as this album is deliriously shapeshifting and kaleidoscopic pop music fever dream.    

It is hard not to think of Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow when listening to this album, as Keith herself describes the Disinblud vision as the duo’s “younger selves packing a satchel, holding hands, and daring one another to run away into a place of ‘wounds and wonder,’ only to discover an unforeseeable magic.” The similarity extends deeper than that, however, as it feels like the duo swapped out the imaginary pop culture of The Pink Opaque for the real pop culture of mainstream dance and pop hits as the gateway for a deep and dizzying plunge into poignant, haunting, and genre-obliterating mindfuckery. In keeping with that theme, Keith and Nayar enlisted a revolving cast of vocalists (Juliana Barwick, Tujiko Noriko, etc.) to help them realize their fractured pop dreams. 

To my ears, the strongest pieces on the album are “Blue Rags, Raging Wind” and “It’s Change.” In the former, a beautifully stuttering and flickering bell melody is joined by piano and snatches of wordless angelic vocals before erupting into a lovely jangling and chiming guitar motif. “It’s Change,” on the other hand, initially sounds like a backwards folk dance colliding with someone cheerily bantering with a puppy, then abruptly transforms into a sensuous groove with warbly backwards guitars and hazy soulful vocals that gorgeously expand into overlapping, intertwined layers. 

While the two pieces are quite different in obvious ways, they have a lot of deeper similarities and those similarities are the thread that runs throughout the entire album: epic-sounding trajectories, mirage-like transformations, cool backwards psych-inspired touches, big melodies, incredibly clean and vivid production, and improbably complicated arrangements. To use a wildly out-of-place sports analogy, Keith and Nayar swing for the fences with just about every single piece here, That is certainly familiar terrain for Nayar, as she has a tendency to invariably dial up the drama to the max in a lot of her recent work, but Keith helps to steer that inevitable eruption into more varied and intricate places than Nayar would on her own.

There are admittedly a handful of aspects to Disinblud that clash with my delicate sensibilities enough to make me feel like the oldest man in the world (shiny pop earnestness, perfect production, a TikTok-esque attention span), but the sheer volume of cool ideas that Keith and Nayar packed into this album was more than enough to help me push through any misgivings. In fact, damn near every single song here features at least one cool surprise that I never saw coming and there are host of passages that could probably make a seasoned prog band weep in admiration. 

While Disinblud may err on the side of everything-but-the-kitchen sink pop maximalism at times, their complex and inventive arrangements and wildly unpredictable transformations regularly make that seeming liability feel like an asset, as their shapeshifting pop delirium cumulatively has the feel of a life review in which intense impressions streak by in a dizzying swirl (or at least like a porous dimensional barrier is suddenly allowing different realities to freely bleed into one another). In short, this album is a tour de force in like five different ways and absolutely no one else could have made anything like it.

Listen here.

a2454062606_16

Lucrecia Dalt, “A Danger To Ourselves” (RVNG Intl., 2025)

,

I was admittedly a bit blindsided by Dalt’s seemingly effortless transformation into an outsider pop chanteuse on 2022’s excellent ¡Ay! album and I am amusingly blindsided yet again with this follow up, as she has somehow gotten even better at balancing her great hooks and sensuous vocals with her wilder, more experimental leanings. In fact, this is unquestionably her finest batch of songs yet, but that achievement is further enhanced by the efforts of some extremely talented and well-chosen collaborators. Notably, Juana Molina, Nick Leon, and Amor Muere‘s Camille Mandoki all make guest appearances on individual pieces, but it is returning percussionist Alex Lazaro and co-producer David Sylvian who nearly steal the show, as both help elevate Dalt’s bold and singular vision into something truly revelatory with their contributions. This is Dalt’s strongest album by a goddamn landslide.

The album opens with the killer lead single “cosa rara (strange thing),” which provides quite a representative overview of nearly everything that I love about this album (albeit with one small caveat). Like many pieces on the album, it is built from little more than a simmering percussion groove, a bass line, Dalt’s charismatic and seductive vocal performance, and a host of cool psychedelic and dub-inspired effects. The minimal arrangements suit these songs extremely well, as Dalt’s voice is more than enough to carry these pieces melodically and the pared-to-the-bone palette of just drums and voice leaves plenty of open space for Dalt and her collaborators to go wild in the periphery with guitar feedback, saxophone squonks, and trippy electronic flourishes. Aside from that, there is also a clapping breakdown (I’m a sucker for a good handclap rhythm) and a great dubby outro featuring a mesmerizing spoken word performance from Sylvian. While literally every individual element is great, “casa rara” narrowly misses being my favorite song on the album solely because it self-destructs right before Sylvian comes in, which gives it the feel of two excellent pieces mashed together rather than one perfectly crafted masterpiece.

Happily, Dalt and company hit the bullseye perfectly a bit later with the achingly gorgeous “divina (divine),” which beautifully enhances the previous winning formula with finger snaps, a few bright piano chords, some kind of cool rattling/shimmer motif, and great backing vocals that evoke a hypnagogic ‘60s girl group. Elsewhere, “no death no danger” is another banger just on the strength of its clanging industrial groove and breathy half-sung vocals alone, but also detours into blown out mindfuck territory and a melodic passage that would not be out of place on an Amy Winehouse album. I also love “agüita con sal (water with salt),” which is mesmerizing for more production-centric reasons, as its lurching futuristic groove and sax blurts are greatly enhanced by hallucinatory spatial movements. The sultry trip-hop of “acéphale” is yet another mesmerizing highlight, as it sounds like the would-be sensual banger of the summer, but still manages to appeal to my weirdo sensibility with gnarled feedback, orchestral surges, and some beautifully slicing high-hat. 

That said, A Danger To Ourselves arguably falls short of perfection because it starts to lull a bit near the end, but this is one of the rare times that I do not care if an album overstays its welcome. For one, the handful of great songs here exceeded my sky-high expectations so decisively that I was left properly gobsmacked, so any further pleasures were just icing the cake. Equally significant is the fact that only one piece (“stelliformia”) failed to grab me in some way, as nearly every song here features at least one extremely cool idea regardless of whether or not that idea managed to make the leap into a great song (the percussion-driven tropical exotica of “mala sangre,” the lurching industrial groove of “caes,” Sylian’s broken-sounding guitar solo in “covenstead blues, etc.). On top of that, Dalt and Syvlian’s incredibly vivid production makes this one hell of a great headphone record, as Lazaro’s unconventional percussion is the ideal raw material for dub-inspired excellence. Given all of that, I feel no hesitation at all in proclaiming A Danger To Ourselves a lock for one of the most essential albums of 2025. Dalt has long been a reliably unique and compelling artist, but she has really been on a tear lately and this album elevates her vision to an entirely new level altogether.

Listen here.

a1575388081_16

Eli Keszler (LuckyMe, 2025)

Amusingly, the first Eli Keszler album that I ever heard was 2011’s Cold Pin, which was centered around a complex percussion installation that used motors and microcontrollers to attack strings and metal squares, so my expectations regarding the rest of his career were definitely quite different than the trajectory that it ultimately took (film soundtracks, a Grammy nomination, etc.). I always enjoy Keszler’s drumming, of course, but some of his chameleonic reinventions definitely appeal to me more strongly than others. This self-titled album (billed as “a freewheeling, Lynchian song-cycle”) is an especially cool one, as Keszler enlisted Stones Throw artist/DJ/electro-pop diva Sofie Royer as the vocalist for a handful of killer noir-jazz gems. The rest of the album is a bit more eclectic and varied, but some of those other directions are compelling too (and there is often some virtuosic drumming to be found as well).

The opening “Wild Wild West” is perhaps the album’s most perfect channeling of Lynchian vibes, as its sultry shuffling rhythm, breathy torch song vocals, twangy surf-noir guitars, and psychotropically buzzing synth bass instantly evoke a slow, sexy dance at Twin Peaks’ Roadhouse. There are also some cool dubby percussion touches, but they are icing on an already perfect cake, as Keszler and Royer slay on pure atmosphere alone. I wish the whole album stayed in that vein (it does not), but the closing “Drip Drip Drip” is at least an absolutely killer (if more macabre) companion piece. 

Notably, the percussion is a bit more inventive and industrial-inspired in “Drip Drip Drip,” but the best bits are generally the mood, the guitars, and Royer, which is not what I would have expected from an album by a percussionist. That said, Keszler does allow himself to go a bit wild on the kit for the piece’s second half, which illustrates a central feature of this album: unusual and unpredictable song structures. Keszler described the album’s creative arc as “I aimed to take a feeling and let the music move freely across mediums, materials, and genres,” though there is also a crucial unifying theme of “everything coated in a sheen of despair and grandeur.”

The remainder of the pieces are an eclectic mixed bag of different experiments and moods. For example, there is another excellent Royer showcase in “Speak For Me,” but it abandons Twin Peaks for an aesthetic best described as “a more libidinous Portishead.” Elsewhere, Keszler goes entirely solo with the unsettling and otherworldly “Sun,” which combines discordant submerged synths and clattering broken beat drums to form a very weird and seasick-sounding strain of futuristic dub. “Ever Shrinking World” is yet another solo banger, approximating an improbable and industrial-damaged collision of Rhythm & Sound and Bark Psychosis (and the skittering drums are quite nice as well). Keszler also channels some other cool influences with varying degrees of success, as “When I Sleep” sounds like an hot improv session between a shoegaze-inspired ambient artist and a free jazz drummer, while “Low Love” feels like blurred and hypnagogic pop à la Julee Cruise (until the machine gun drums kick in, anyway).

Part of me admittedly wishes this album was a bit less stylistically fluid and that Keszler had instead just set out to craft a hot batch of killer singles with Royer, as the two definitely locked onto a winning vision with “Wild Wild West” and “Drip Drip Drip.” I suspect that Keszler is too creatively restless to be satisfied with just composing a bunch of cool singles though, as this album is teeming with disparate other ideas that he was keen on exploring. As such, this album is best appreciated as a kind of imaginary soundtrack set in the neon-soaked world of a city in the small hours after all the wholesome people have gone home: sex, melancholy, and desperation mingled with occasional glimpses of beauty or clarity. 

Unlike traditional songs, most of these pieces abandon the expected “verse, chorus, repeat” formula to take unexpected yet cool detours, which is kind of how film soundtracks work: if the scene changes after two minutes, the score changes with it. That stylistic instability can certainly be frustrating when Keszler abandons a promising theme for something else, but it works pretty well in an album-sized dose, as there is a compelling arc here and the various interludes and jazzy flourishes keep things fresh and pleasantly unpredictable between the major highlights.

Listen here. 

a0087748114_16

Anadol, “Uzun Havalar” (Kinship (2018)/Pingipung (2019))

This 2018 album was not Anadol’s debut, but it was definitely the first album from the project that actually managed to reach a wide audience (quite deservedly, since it is an absolute banger). The project (named after an old Turkish automobile brand) is self-described as “psychedelic synth folk” this time around, as Uzun Havalar is assembled from “collective improvisations of Middle Eastern folk songs called ‘uzun hava.’” While the album was recorded in Istanbul with a varying ensemble of talented improvisers, Anadol is ostensibly the solo project of Berlin-based photographer and sound artist Gözen Atila, who delved into lo-fi synth pop to escape the “darkness of serious music.” In that regard, she succeeded quite spectacularly, as Uzun Havalar evokes the kitschy magic of a fun (and remarkably virtuosic) ‘80s Turkish wedding band indulging their wildest prog & space rock dreams.  

The heart of the Anadol sound is Atila’s fondness for “mini organs manufactured during the 70s and 80s,” as she clearly relishes using their preset rhythms as the playful foundations for these pieces. Anyone who ever owned a cheap Casio will likely recognize a festive pre-programmed “samba” or “bossa nova” setting or two on this album, as Atila loves the inherent humor and challenge in “working with clichés” and transcending the limitations of retro electronics and minimalist gear.  She also has a deep fondness for the “tavern music” aesthetic that was popular in Turkey’s nightlife in the 1980s, which usually involved a lone musician with a keyboard singing an eclectic array of pop hits to drunk middle-aged couples in pubs.

While I would probably love a pure pastiche of that era, that is just one of the many eclectic inspirations behind Uzun Havalar, as Atila and her ensemble gamely assimilate everything from classic Euro/Turkish film soundtracks to Dada-esque art provocations to outsider artists like The Space Lady. Hell, I think classic Pink Floyd may even be in there as well, but the actual influences matter less than the fact that Atila and her cadre of Turkish improv luminaries manage to keep things sizzling and propulsive despite the campy and improbable genre collisions that they are continually navigating. 

Most of the strongest pieces fall on the first side of the album and the best of the lot is either “Ay Çürüdü (The Moon Decayed)” or “Casio Havası.” Notably, the latter is the only solo Atila performance on the album, but its kooky and sensuous groove somehow sounds like a killer jazz ensemble borrowed the gear from a minimal wave act for a smoldering afterhours set at an Turkish nightclub. It absolutely rules, but so does the similarly wild and weird “Ay Çürüdü.”

“Ay Çürüdü” deceptively starts off with little more than melancholy synth chords and some smoldering and soulful contributions from saxophonists Fehmican Gözüm and Suphi Sökücü and trumpeter Serkan Emre Çiftçi, but catches fire in sublime fashion once the wistful vocal melody comes in. I am honestly not sure if that melody is vocalist Lale Kardeş singing through some effects or if it is the “voice” setting on one of Atila’s organs, but it is sensuous, slow-motion heaven regardless. There are also plenty of spirited whoops and gales of laughter along the way, a trippy synth solo that recalls classic Pink Floyd at their spaciest, and killer production that makes the brass bits sound absolutely amazing on headphones. In short, it’s an absolute tour de force. 

I was also a bit blown away by the freewheeling opener “Görünmez Hava (Invisible Air),” as a locked groove-style bass line and a jazzy pre-set rhythm anchor a weird and wild trip though an eclectic array of organ sounds. Unusually, Atila is joined by Emir Özer on synth, so there is an amusing “dueling synth” aspect to the piece that sounds like the pair are gleefully channel-surfing through various proggy and spacey synth sounds, but they also seem to always have a cool melody idea already locked and loaded for each fresh setting. The dubby effects on Askin Kirim’s trumpet are quite nice as well.

While the remaining four pieces do not ascend to quite the same level as those highlights, they are at least memorably eccentric and outré. For example, “Adieu” lands somewhere between the carnivalesque and a manic jazz score to a chase scene in a ‘70s underground animation film, while “Bir Garip Kan İçme Töreni (A Strange Blood-Drinking Ceremony)” sounds like it could be a Nintendo game theme colliding with the ululations from hammily over-acted scream queen auditions. Both “Ya Evde Korksan (What If You’re Scared at Home?)” and the melancholy guitar closer “78 Yılının En Uzun Dakikası (The Longest Minute of ’78)” have their share of cool moments though.

Normally, I would not hail an album with only three great songs as a masterpiece, but Uzun Havalar is a rare exception, as the best bits are almost impossibly cool and it is also damn near impossible not to love Atila’s cheerfully deranged and endlessly entertaining “anything goes” aesthetic. At its best, this album sounds like it could be an imaginary Sublime Frequencies comp entitled “Killer Turkish Wedding Band Inexplicably Got Booked to Play a Psychedelic Laser Light Show at a Planetarium (and They Absolutely Smashed It).”

Listen here. 

a3165299015_16

Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin, “Ghosted III” (Drag City, 2025)

,

This reliably fascinating trio is back with a third installment in their excellent Ghosted series. The label describes this one as “a little looser and wilder than before,” which is probably an accurate assessment, but the increased wildness is mostly relegated to Ambarchi’s forays into his table of electronics and effects pedals rather than any kind of larger penchant for volcanic crescendos. To my ears, this album actually feels a bit more subdued and jazz/fusion-inspired than the previous installments, but it also sometimes feels like an album-length expansion of Ghosted II’s strongest piece (“tre”). Given the latter, I would have expected to love this album much more than I do, but it feels like a bit of a mixed bag instead. That said, Ambarchi still has plenty of tricks up his sleeve, so the lesser pieces are interesting enough to (mostly) hold my attention in the long stretch between the album’s two killer highlights.

The album opens with the first of its two stellar highlights, “Yek,” which is centered around an endlessly repeating upright bass lick, a wonderfully simmering drum workout, and a circular harmonic motif from Ambarchi that unpredictably throws in new notes and fitfully blossoms into longer tendrils of melody. While all three musicians are always doing something extremely cool at all times, I was initially a bit underwhelmed, as the trio seemed to be treading water rather than evolving the piece into something more, but then a gong crashed and Ambarchi unexpectedly launched into a chiming arpeggio motif that felt like a vivid splash of harmonic color (and the bass line even changed slightly too!). That transformation proves to be just an interlude, however, as the band soon tightens up again and reverts back to the original harmonic motif. The rest of the piece then becomes a back-and-forth between those two themes that extends almost all the way to the end. Not ALL the way though, as the final appearance of the harmonic motif begins to distend and greedily accumulate additional layers until the final moments sound like I am being serenaded by a legion of celestial harp-wielding cherubs, which was one hell of a cool twist that I did not see coming. 

The album’s other masterpiece (“Panj”) falls near the end of the album and opens in deceptively modest fashion, as the piece begins with little more than a slow-motion groove, a simple descending bass line, and something that sounds like a hazy, shimmering organ drone. That organ-like drone gradually becomes the soul of the piece, however, endlessly fading in and out of focus and erratically flickering into oscillations of varying speeds. It is a quietly mesmerizing place to linger and that is exactly what the trio do for a while, but Werliin kicks off the next phase with some chimes and Ambarchi’s sounds become more choppy, more ghostly, and increasingly disrupted with biting squawks of feedback. Then comes the next brilliant trick, as it soon sounds like Ambarchi’s sounds are suddenly submerged or dissolved into inaudibility to leave behind little more than rattles and a streaking spectral haze that is more felt than heard.

The remaining four pieces lamentably do not ascend to similar levels of inspiration, but some of them definitely have their moments. For the most part, Berthling and Werliin spend every single piece locked into an unchanging minimalist vamp (though Werliin is definitely a guy who can keep a vamp sizzling nicely on the drum kit). Given that restraint, however, these pieces tend to live or die on the strength of Ambarchi’s ideas and sometimes he seems pretty happy to just conjure a languorous mood for a while (especially on “Do” and “Shesh”). Elsewhere, the drum-less “Seh” evokes the austere, bass-driven jazz/post-rock fusion of Tortoise without ever catching fire. Alas. I do find “Chahar” quite fascinating, however. It starts off sounding like business-as-usual (repeating bass line, jazzy almost-breakbeat drumming), but the guitars err a bit on the side of searching and noodling. By the end, however, it becomes a layered fantasia of sweeping harmonics and a hovering organ-like drone that wildly oscillates and threatens to consume everything around it (and then Ambarchi ices the cake with a solo that sounds like a drugged calliope). 

Given that only a few pieces here actually ascend to the expected level of greatness, this album would not be a good entry point for the curious, as the trio’s other two albums are considerably more impressive (or at least more instantly gratifying). That said, I sincerely doubt that anyone would dive into the third installment of a series first, so most people who hear this album will have already been primed by its predecessors. Unsurprisingly, that is my situation and that context nicely enhanced my appreciation for what would have otherwise been an underwhelming release. This is certainly not the trio’s strongest work, but I do genuinely admire how the group have managed to evolve and expand their sound within some brutally tight stylistic constraints. While I suspect the weaker pieces here would have eventually transformed into something greater if they’d been given a bit more time to gestate, my belief that Oren Ambarchi is one of the most inventive and consistently compelling guitarists around remains very much intact.

Listen here.  

a1896713498_16

ssabæ, “azurescens” (Few Crackles, 2022)

, ,

This is the third album from an enigmatic and self-described “nebula of friends gathering in studios, meadows and tiny apartments all over France” and fittingly borrows its name from a species of psychedelic mushroom. While the mushrooms, the meadows, and the mysterious revolving cast of musicians certainly all suggest that azurescens is likely to be packed with interminable and loose freak-folk jams, absolutely nothing could be further from the reality. In fact, the only real similarity to freak/outsider folk music is merely the timeless and hallucinatory vibe that this collective beautifully conjures. Someone in this nebula clearly knows their way around a studio and set out to craft an absolutely sublime, minimalist vision. Whoever it was, they succeeded quite beautifully (my money is on saxophonist Gwen Jamois, the given name of world-class crate-digger and electronic music producer lueke). 
 

The album opens with its most eerie piece, “tous les murs sont des portes,” which sounds like a nursery rhyme recorded by either a cult or a coven of witches. It is also quite hauntingly beautiful though, as vocalist Margaux Delatour hypnotically chants a few French phrases over a stark backdrop of discordant autoharp strums, strangled saxophone squawks, and trippy dub effects. It is quite an ingeniously constructed piece as well, as Delatour’s sensual sing-song chant provides perfect the melodic grounding to free up the rest of the ensemble to unleash a quietly vivid and spatially mobile psychedelic storm of smeared drones, jangling chimes, and broken sounding arpeggios.While the rest of the album is considerably less witchy in atmosphere, the remaining songs can almost all be reasonably described as variations on the same killer theme, as each piece is built from a simple melodic motif that is immersed in a gorgeously lysergic swirl of otherworldly sounds and textures.
 

In the following “le matin,” for example, a delicate harp and a repeating bass line form the melodic backbone of the piece, but the atmosphere is largely driven by the surrounding sounds of singing birds and laughter (along with some subtly hazy synth shimmer). The overall effect is somewhere between Portishead DJing a sizzlin’ party at an aviary and a chamber music nightmare haunted by hollowly cheerful sounds. Elsewhere, “en équilibre” is a considerably warmer highlight, as Delatour wordlessly hums a pretty melody over a minimal backdrop of conversation and Spanish-sounding guitar. To my ears, however, the final piece on the album (“l’archipel fractal”) that is the real stunner, as a gently pulsing and glassy sounding melody languorously unfolds over a simple backdrop of still more Spanish-sounding acoustic guitar. It makes me feel like I am being serenaded by a heavenly dream calliope while napping on a beautiful patio overlooking the Mediterranean, but it is also mingled with a sense of unreality akin to living inside the tropical version of a snow globe.
 

That said, the title piece is another fierce contender for the album’s zenith, as Delatour’s melancholy and sensuous vocals initially evoke a torch song chanteuse performing an a cappella tour de force in front of a gently hissing waterfall. It gradually fleshes out a bit with some saxophone and light psychedelic magic in the periphery, but the real beauty lies in how Delatour’s voice lazily pans around spatially and sometimes feels incredibly close and intimate. That trick in particular captures the essence of what makes this album so fucking mesmerizing and immersive on headphones, as ssabæ distill their vision to such perfect simplicity that every single note and texture can make a big impact and potentially send shivers down my spine. This is an absolutely sublime and mesmerizing release.

Listen here. 

a0052926009_16

Thomas Ankersmit, “The Dip” (Students of Decay, 2025)

,

This latest opus from Berlin’s Thomas Ankersmit continues his work with the Serge Modular synthesizer, which is just fine by me, as his last two Serge albums were pure headphone nirvana. Notably, both of those albums were homages of a sort (to Dick Raaijmakers and Maryanne Amacher), but The Dip is simply Thomas Ankersmit being Thomas Ankersmit, which is a significantly different vision. Naturally, many of the familiar sounds of the Serge are back, but the focus has shifted away from spatial movements a bit and more towards “introspective, atmospheric, and even melodic elements.” The result is still an immersive and deeply evocative sound world, but it is a bit less alien this time around and even features a lengthy passage of absolutely sublime beauty.

The album is composed of two pieces, each of which fills an entire side of the vinyl release. The first piece, “17:54,” opens with a deep bass rumble that slowly fades in with an accompaniment of various chirps, beeps, whines, and short-wave radio interference sounds. That is not particularly compelling or unique modular synth territory at first, but as everything starts coming together, it sounds like some kind of Morse code message of beeps is coming in right before the short-wave radio becomes possessed by more demonic sounds and a dense miasma of feedback, crackle, and insectoid chattering. Then things start to get quite a bit more interesting, as the sounds suddenly become less spasmodic and the piece unexpectedly opens up into an eerie interlude of feedback-like drones.

A series of deep explosions in the distance soon follows, as does a series of sounds that resemble downed power lines shooting sprays of sparks onto deserted streets. Throughout it all, the eerie drones organically and beautifully oscillate and pulse like a sentient alien cloud, which provides a suitably haunting backdrop for what sounds like every nearby transformer slowly exploding in a rain of sparks as distorted, unintelligible voices gibber like an urgent warning message that never reached its mark. Then a train roars by overhead and the final moments are just the hiss of a soft rainstorm, the rumble of distant thunder, and lonely gusts of wind blowing down empty streets. 

The second piece (“18:51”) is a similarly stellar slow-burner. It opens in similarly modest fashion with some oscillating bass drones, short-wave radio squall, eruptions of static, and a rhythmic hiss motif that could be either a distant train or a rainstorm. After a series of blurting convulsions, however, the piece opens up into a meditative passage of dreamlike, slow-motion melody that resembles a solemn organ mass drifting through fitful squalls of short-wave radio interference. Gradually, however, the organ sounds start erratically bending and pitch-shifting and the electronic chaos is replaced by the calming sounds of cricket- or cicada-like chatter and hum before a series distorted and haunted sounds rhythmically rumble through the landscape like earthquake aftershocks as fireworks explode overhead. 

Then things start to get considerably weirder, as a melodic element that sounds like a stuttering, manic, and out-of-control ‘80s video game theme appears, which Ankersmit slowly expands into a truly majestic crescendo of poignant, harmonically rich chords that steadily intensify into something that feels smoldering, immense, and elemental. That proves to be a false ending, however, as a heavy blackened drone eventually envelops everything like a goddamn eclipse to leave behind only a slow fadeout of soft chords in a ruined landscape of erratic beeps and insistently throbbing distortion.

Both pieces are absolute stunners, which is a doubly impressive feat given that I already loved Ankersmit’s Serge work and thought I knew what to expect. Apparently, Ankersmit has been working with the Serge for nearly two decades now, which explains quite a lot: there are plenty of cool artists dabbling in vintage/modular synthesizers these days, but there are not a hell of a lot of people around who have actually managed to master some of the more complex and challenging models. To my ears, it sure seems like Ankersmit is one of the rare exceptions, as the spells he weaves here feel like absolute sorcery to me. This may very well be my favorite album in Ankersmit’s entire discography.

Listen here.

a1774157198_16

lilien rosarian, “a day in bel bruit” (Self-Released, 2019)

This self-released 2019 debut from NY-based tape loop artist Lilien Rosarian has become something of an underground cult classic, but there is not a hell of a lot of biographical or background information available about her work. I do, however, know that Rosarian was still in college when she recorded this album and that she originally started off making instrumental hip-hop, but moved onto working with physical tape loops because she grew weary of staring at computer screens all the time (very relatable). Also, her brother Corey played all the instruments on the album and provided the cover art.

Unsurprisingly, the album details are similarly scant, but deliciously so, as it is fitting that such a singular and mysterious album would have a singular and mysterious premise at its heart. In essence, a day in del bruit is a vision of a single day in an imaginary abandoned village in which the sounds of the departed denizens have been replaced by broadcasts from a satellite dish haphazardly built on a bell tower. Notably, the inclusion of the word “haphazardly” is quite important, as this album is more like a Ligotti or Alisdair Gray-esque nightmare than magical realism, as the idyllic sounds of the town are often rendered grotesquely gnarled, gnawed, and convulsive by the mangled tape loops (the French “del Bruit” roughly translates as “of the noise” incidentally). In the world of the album, that satellite dish is NOT functioning at the peak of its powers.

Happily, there are plenty of genuinely beautiful passages to be found as well, but the brutality that Rosarian’s tape loops experience places her work light years away from anything I have heard from other tape artists. I am always a sucker for a good tape loop artist and Rosarian inventively shifts the focus away from the obvious pleasures of frayed textures and out-of-phase rhythms to evoke a demonically possessed tape machine that transforms the cheerful sounds of a bustling village into something unsettling and faintly sinister.

The album is roughly divided into two halves, as Rosarian envisioned the first half as daytime songs and the second as nighttime songs. The opening “theme for empty village” sets the mood nicely, as a squall of static gives way to a collage of gently smeared music box melodies, a chorus of happily singing birds, and the submerged, indecipherable voices of the happy non-existent villagers. That veiled vision of pastoral bliss is unnervingly precarious, however, as the sounds fitfully distort and curdle into considerably more nightmarish territory. It also sometimes sounds like two very different movies are bleeding into one another (one portraying a pleasant day at the carnival and the other portraying a tale of supernatural suspense from the 1940s).

Obviously, The Caretaker and William Basinski are the big reference points for frayed and decaying tape loop fantasias, but Rosarian’s vision reminds me much more of filmmaker Bill Morrison’s Decasia, which collaged badly oxidized silent film-era reels into a mesmerizing mindfuck of blistering, bubbling, warped, and solarized abstraction in which characters are regularly obliterated by streaks of corrosion or enveloping voids of blackness.

That said, pieces like the excellent “dead flowers still seem to smile” also feel like a compelling innovation upon Oval’s early work with skipping CDs, as it Rosarian’s loops often stammer in a state of suspended animation before abruptly lurching into the next passage, yet the stuttering loops are also continually warping and varying in both speed and pitch even within their imaginary locked grooves. Elsewhere, “the marketplace” is a very different type of highlight, as wistful piano chords and strummed acoustic guitars evoke a lazy, sun-dappled Sunday afternoon, but they also seem to be dragging a gnarly undercurrent of howling and murky chaos in their wake (and there’s even a surprise backwards coda to boot).

I am also extremely fond of “singalong in the village square,” which is a whooshing and churning maelstrom that suggests a collision of time-stretched roller coaster excitement and a goddamn hurricane. In fact, that piece is one of several prime illustrations of what makes a day in bel bruit such a weirdly beautiful and haunting experience, as Rosarian warmly and sentimentally evokes an enchanted mid-20th century rural village full of happy birds, chiming bells, carnival calliopes, friendly neighbors, and pretty music box melodies, yet proves herself equally adept at making that idyllic mirage fray and flicker to reveal glimpses of churning cosmic horror or sinister transmissions from space. If you have ever felt like you are living in a malfunctioning simulation, this is the fucking album for you. In short, this album rules. Rosarian has truly crafted one hell of a deeply immersive, timeless, and truly unique album and I do not expect to hear anything quite like it ever again (not even from Rosarian herself, as she opted for a much less disturbing vision with 2022’s every flower in my garden. 

Listen here.

Load More