Category: experimental rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ulrika Spacek Returns with Labyrinthine and Ethereal “Square Root of None”

Formed back in 2014, London-based art rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Ulrika Spacek — founding members Rhys Edwards (vocals, guitar) and Rhys Williams (guitar) , alongside Joseph Stone (guitar, keys), Callum Brown (drums), Syd Kemp (bass) — can trace their origins back to a night the band’s founding duo spent in Berlin, where the pair conceptualized the project around their mutually held passions and influences — in particular, Television, Pavement, Sonic Youth and krautrock. 

Upon the duo’s return to the UK, they began working on the material that would eventually comprise their full-length debut, 2016’s The Album Paranoia, which featured album tracks “She’s A Cult,” and “Strawberry Glue.”

Since then, the project which started out as a duo, expanded to quintet with the addition of Stone, Callum, Brown and Kemp – and then released 2017’s critically applauded sophomore album, Modern English Decoration, an album that saw the band pushing their sound into a more textured territory. Their third and latest album, last year’s Compact Trauma channeled the anxiety and dislocation of the modernize age through a prismatic haze of guitars, loops and elliptical lyrics. 

The British art rock outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album EXPO is slated for a February 6, 2026 release through Full Time Hobby. Unlike its predecessors, which looked within, EXPO reportedly holds a mirror up to the world and captures a warped reflection. The material was deeply informed by the band’s most recent American tour and was written while the band’s Rhys Edwards was awaiting the birth of his daughter, and started to wonder what kind of future world she’d inherit. 

Although their foundations have long been in art rock, they’ve been increasingly drawing from electronic elements. But as a band, they’re interested in the glitchy space that exists between the two. And as a result, their most recent work reckons with human warmth and digital isolation, while being welcoming and alienating, exploring the uneasy tension of modern life as we know it. “Our music has always been a collage – a bit patchwork, sonically – but what makes this album a landmark for us is that we went one step further and made our own sound bank and essentially sampled ourselves,” the band says. 

The band creates their own doppelgängers in a world of almost-real, where the band appears as if they’re in a funhouse hall of mirrors. Digital drums are sampled and layered over real drums and the like, creating an eerie, spectral vibe. Sonically, album’s material grapples with the organic and the digital while dancing across musical languages. 

The album will feature the previously released, “Build a Box, Then Break It,” a track that serves as a de-facto album mission statement that sees the JOVM mainstays actively pushing their sound into a new liminal space, while seemingly channeling Geoff Barrow‘s work with Portishead and Beak>, Radiohead‘s Amnesiac and The Orielles‘ The Goyt Method EP.

EXPO’s second and latest single “Square Root of None,” is an expansive, labyrinthine track that twists, turns and morphs in weird, prismatic directions seemingly at will. Featuring a looping and shimming guitar figure, bursts squealing feedback and a krautrock-like rhythm section, anchored around angular percussive attack, “Square Root of None” further establishes the album’s overall aesthetic while lyrically drawing from the language of math and coding, giving the entire affair a chilly, clinical vibe. The track, as the band says is about “throwing ideas at a wall” during a particularly cold Stockholm winter; one of the rare opportunities that the members of the band were in the same room together.

Directed by Katya Ganfeld, the accompanying video for “Square Root of None,” features the band performing in a studio with computer code, mathematical equations and computer screens superimposed on and around them.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 49th Birthday, Oliver Ackermann!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates A Place to Bury Strangers frontman Oliver Ackermann’s 49th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 54th Birthday, Jonny Greenwood!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Radiohead’s and The Smile’s Jonny Greenwood’s 54th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Denmark’s Catcase Shares Brooding “Technicolored Eyes”

Initially, founded by Danish singer/songwriter and guitarist Lasse B. Beck, who also split time in Syringe and The Love Coffin, as a bedroom project that’s the culmination of years of tormented sensitivity, frustration and self-reflection, Catcase expanded to a full band last year with the addition of Beck’s brother Niclas Berg Christiansen, a member of Shiver Less and The Road to Suicide; Deadpan‘s and Sanderson & the Charabancs‘ Max Cosiner; Chopper‘s Josephine Alicia; Jane’s and Chopper’s Jason Lee Cameron; and Leizure’s, Tugboat‘s and Sanderson & the Charabancs’ Mathias Gørtz, who were enlisted to flesh out Beck’s artistic vision.

Sonically, the band draws from an eclectic array of influences: Australasian post-punk, sophistipop, jangle pop and dream pop with nods to Spiritualized, The Go-Betweens, Rowland S. Howard, Xiu Xiu, Prefab Sprout and My Bloody Valentine. And yet, the Danish sextet claims kinship with contemporaries like Strange Ranger, Bleary Eyed and Nyxy Nyx among others.

Slated for a February 20, 2026 release through Pink Cotton Candy Records, the band’s Kristian Alexander-produced full-length debut, As It Reels was recorded earlier this year at Copenhagen‘s Royal Danish Academy of Music. As It Reels‘ first single “Technicolored Eyes” is an eerie and brooding bit of art rock that channels Priest = Aura-era The Church with subtle dream pop and grunge-inspired flourishes that showcases the band’s ability to craft a rousingly anthemic hook and chorus, while being anchored earnest, lived-in songwriting.

Lyrically, the song evokes a liminal state familiar to my fellow night owls out there: The often lonely trip home after a night out of hijinks and adventures as the sun rises. And if you’re as familiar with it as I am, that trip home is throbbing mass of impressions, informed by nostalgia, loneliness, drunkenness.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Orielles Share Expansive “Three Halves”

Acclaimed, Manchester, UK-based JOVM mainstays The Orielles — Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals), Sidonie Dee Hand-Halford (drums, vocals) and Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals) — will be releasing their fourth album, the Joel Anthony Patchett-produced Only You Left through Heavenly Recordings on March 13, 2026.

Recorded last summer in two locations — the Greek Island of Hydra and Hamburg — the forthcoming, 11-song Only You Left reportedly sees the band consolidating the bold experimentation of 2022’s Tableau with the more stripped-back, song-driven approach of their earlier releases, channeling a return to the familiar. “There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio.

Now, as you may remember, the JOVM mainstays, which originally started out in Halifax gained attention both nationally and internationally with the release of their full-length debut, 2018’s Silver Dollar Moment, which will celebrate its eighth birthday this upcoming February. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we’ve come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people,” the band says.

As for the foundations of the forthcoming album, the band’s Henry Carlyle Wade says “You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums.” “It comes naturally, the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford adds, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Interestingly through this process of creative renewal, the JOVM mainstays have managed to weather a pandemic, the fickleness of a trend-driven music industry and somehow emerge with something that’s familiar yet completely different.

According to Wade, the first ideas for the new album can be traced back to May 2023: Esmé Hand-Halford had purchased a freeze pedal, which allowed her to play around with sustained notes on her guitar. These heavy drones would later form the background of album tracks “Wasp” and “Three Halves.” 

In breaks between tours, the bands began to meet up and record their practice room sessions, later analyzing the voice notes with a granular attention to detail. “We recorded everything on our phones, every snippet,” explains Henry. “We went so deep into what each song needed or what we wanted to hear from it.”

While the Tableau sessions were semi-improvisational and partially written in the recording studio, Only You Left was fleshed out through a series of intense writing sessions between May 2023 and last summer. Each of the album’s 11 songs were meticulously refined and became its own distinctive work. “It almost felt really novel for us to be writing as a three-piece and really, really crafting these songs,” the band’s Esmé Hand-Halford recalls. “But Tableau gave us that confidence to know we could go into a studio and pull things together in that setting under the time pressure.”

Producer and engineer Joel Anthony Patchett, whom Esmé Hand-Halford dubs the honorary fourth member of the band, has had a massive influence on the album’s sound and approach. “Joel brings an extra level of interpretation and deep listening,” Henry Carlyle Wade says, “and it’s always exciting to explore that.” Sidonie Hand-Halford adds, “He’s constantly talking us through every step of what he’s doing and getting really, really involved with that process as well. And we’re just kind of learning together and making these mistakes and discovering things together.”

Only You Left‘s first single “Three Halves” derives its title when Wade stitched together three recordings on Ableton and needed a working title. What began as a temporary placeholder soon became a theme for Esmé Hand-Halford to riff on, a metaphor for the trio and their deeply shared connection.

At points noisy and driving and dreamlike and mediative in others, “Three Halves” is an expansive study in contrasts that’s experimental yet accessible while anchored by the razor sharp hooks that the Manchester-based outfit had been known for.

“Citing ideas that we took interest in during the early stages of writing the new record, ‘Three Halves’ flips between its absurd contrasts as the name suggests,” the band says. “Built upon a soundscape of droning organs, guitar, and cello it floats between noise and emptiness, precision, and catharsis, welcoming each half leads into the next.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ulrika Spacek Shares Eerily Atmospheric “Build a box Then Break It”

Formed back in 2014, London-based art rock outfit Ulrika Spacek — founding members Rhys Edwards (vocals, guitar) and Rhys Williams (guitar) , alongside Joseph Stone (guitar, keys), Callum Brown (drums), Syd Kemp (bass) — can trace their origins back to a night the band’s founding duo spent in Berlin, where the pair conceptualized the project around their mutually held passions and influences — in particular, Television, Pavement, Sonic Youth and krautrock.

Upon the duo’s return to the UK, they began working on the material that would eventually comprise their full-length debut, 2016’s The Album Paranoia, which featured album tracks “She’s A Cult,” and “Strawberry Glue.”

Since then, the project which started out as a duo, expanded to quintet with the addition of Stone, Callum, Brown and Kemp – and then released 2017’s critically applauded sophomore album, Modern English Decoration, an album that saw the band pushing their sound into a more textured territory. Their third and latest album, last year’s Compact Trauma channeled the anxiety and dislocation of the modernize age through a prismatic haze of guitars, loops and elliptical lyrics.

The British art rock outfit’s highly-anticipated fourth album EXPO is slated for a February 6, 2026 release through Full Time Hobby. Unlike its predecessors, which looked within EXPO reportedly holds a mirror up to the world and captures a warped reflection. The material was deeply informed by the band’s most recent American tour and was written while the band’s Rhys Edwards was awaiting the birth of his daughter, and started to wonder what kind of future world she’d inherit.

Although their foundations have long been in art rock, they’ve been increasingly drawing from electronic elements. But as a band, they’re interested in the glitchy space that exists between the two. And as a result, their most recent work reckons with human warmth and digital isolation, while being welcoming and alienating, exploring the uneasy tension of modern life as we know it. “Our music has always been a collage – a bit patchwork, sonically – but what makes this album a landmark for us is that we went one step further and made our own sound bank and essentially sampled ourselves,” the band says.

The band creates their own doppelgängers in a world of almost-real, where the band appears as if they’re in a funhouse hall of mirrors. Digital drums are sampled and layered over real drums and the like, creating an eerie, spectral vibe. Sonically, album’s material grapples with the organic and the digital while dancing across musical languages.

EXPO‘s first single “Build a Box Then Break It” serves a de-facto album mission statement that sees the band actively pushing their sound into a new, liminal space. Seemingly channeling Geoff Barrow‘s work with Portishead and Beak>, Radiohead‘s Amnesiac and The Orielles‘ The Goyt Method EP, “Build a Box Then Break It,” features sampled upon sampled breakbeats, eerily atmospheric synths and squiggling guitars serving as a broodingly uneasy bed for Rhys Edwards’ plaintive and uncannily Thom Yorke-like delivery. The new single evokes our fractured experience of reality, reflected not through our eyes but through various screens.

The accompanying video was edited by Low Limit Vision and features live footage shot by Pedro Soler interspersed with title cards, math equations and other ephemeral imagery.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 85th Birthday, John Lennon!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 85th anniversary of John Lennon’s birth.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Juana Molina Shares Atmospheric “Siestas ahí”

Acclaimed Argentine-born and-based singer/songwriter and musician and JOVM mainstay Juana Molina‘s highly-anticipated and long-awaited eighth album, DOGA is also her first album of new material in eight years. The album took six years to complete.

As the Argentine-born and-based JOVM mainstay suggests, DOGA‘s creative process was much like preparing a meal for six but with enough ingredients to feed an army. The overwhelming amount of recordings had Molina paralyzed to the point that at one moment, she thought there was no way to make an album.

“Whenever I finish making an album there’s an inertia that makes me keep recording,” the Argentine-born and-based JOVM mainstay says. But the origin of DOGA‘s material can be traced back to 2019, during the preparation for a series of concerts called “Improviset,” which Molina performed with keyboardist Odin Schwartz.

“The idea was to play as if I were at home, that is, to improvise,” Molina says. “It was a duo mostly of analog synthesizers and sequencers. We recorded everything—so many hours—because there was no way to reproduce what we did; both rehearsals and shows were unique. Some of those ideas were later picked up again.”

As the world was about to ground to a halt as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the acclaimed JOVM mainstay was finishing a set at March 2020’s NRMAL Festival in Mexico City. That festival set wound up comprising her first ever live album, ANRMAL, a live set that featured material from 2013’s Wed 21, 2017’s Halo and 2019’s Forfun EP.

The end of the pandemic saw several new developments in Molina’s career: Along with her producer and current manager Mario Agustín de Jesús González, a.k.a. Marito, founded her own label, Sonamos, which released a handful of anniversary reissues such as 1971’s Musicasión 4 ½, a foundation Uruguayan candombe-beat album and Molina’s 2000 effort, Segundo, a key record in her own growing discography. She returned to performing in several different iterations, including solo sets, “Improviset,” which Ordin Schwartz or a duo with drummer Diego López de Arcuate across the States, Europe and Asia.

She also several contractual ties with the various record companies that had previously released her work in different regions across the globe. In doing so, Molina finally became her own artist — and on her own terms.

Simultaneously, she was busy writing new material and in spring 2022, the JOVM mainstay booked ten days at Córdoba, Argentina‘s Sonorámrica Studios. “We brought a preselection of the Improviset recordings, and there the ideas for new songs appeared more clearly,” she says.

Building upon the momentum of the Córdoba momentum, her home studio in the Buenos Aires suburbs became the home for long, sprawling recording sessions. By mid last year, five songs were sketched out. And there were a trove of recordings for Molina and her collaborator to dive into and try to work into an album. “After Sonorámica I spent two more years composing; I felt I had nothing,” Molina says. “Until one day Marito started organizing what I had and we saw we’d reached 30 hours of ideas. That sparked enthusiasm but at the same time it paralyzed me having to decide which direction to take, because there were very dissimilar things. We even fantasized about making a triple album, one of them instrumental.”

Early last year, Marito proposed the idea of working with an external producer, someone with fresh ears for the new material to help the acclaimed Argentine finish the album. Around that time, Emilio Haro, best known for his work on Carolo’s 2023 full-length debut was enlisted to produce the album. And as it turned out, Haro’s influence was decisive: “He got very excited from the start, and I could say he got more out of me than anyone before,” Molina recalls. “I would record a guitar and he’d tell me to record more—different sounds, different arrangements, different ideas. Then he would take the recordings and program things on his own; many of those elements ended up on the record. I like his overall sense of the songs, the aesthetic of the mixes. I’m more of a straightforward person; I don’t usually use post-recording effects, and I thought Emilio had great command for creating spaces around things.”

Slated for a November 5, 2025 release through Molina’s Sonamos Records, DOGA reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay concentrating all the qualities that have long defined her work while going a step further in her constant pursuit for the singular. The album amy arguably be among the most genuinely original and unlike anything else of her entire career. Sonically, the album’ material features unexpected melodies, ethereal, organic songs, minimalist and subtle gestures, austere seemingly static harmonies, lyrics as concentric layers while anchored around repetition.

DOGA‘s first single “Siestas ahí,” features Molina’s processed and distorted vocals ethereally floating earound a looping guitar figure and glitchy electronics. Simultaneously intimate and cinematic, “Siestas ahí,” showcases `the acclaimed JOVM mainstays unerring knack for crafting material that’s unflinchingly difficult to pigeonhole yet remarkably accessible.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Copenhagen’s Young Couple Shares Brooding “As the Leaves Unfold”

Copenhagen-based art rock/experimental art rock outfit Young Couple — Jonas Tøibner (vocals, guitar), Mikkel Kruse (bass), Eigil Fauerskov (guitar), Jens Brøndum (saxophone), and Christian Hafdrup (drums) — have crafted a intimate and unpredictable sound that sits within the intersection of post-rock, dream pop and neo-psychedelia featuring complex rhythmic structures, glitchy electronics, shoegazer like guitar textures and brooding sax lines paired with yearning vocals singing abstract lyrics full of fleeting, evasive images, describing an emotional landscape where love, dreams and friendships often intertwine.

The quintet have made a name for themselves in the Danish underground scene, playing shows with Jenny, Himmelrum and Bishbusch while members of the band have also played with Martha Elisabeth, Niko Corlin and Vakt. Building upon a growing profile in the Danish scene, Young Couple’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, yc is slated for a November 7, 2025 release through Pink Cotton Candy Records.

yc is the culmination of years of close friendship, extermination and musical exploration that reportedly sees the band pairing warm, organic instrumentation with layers of processing and effects. While drawing from shoegaze, post-rock and experimental pop, yc‘s material pushes the boundaries of those genres into something simultaneously familiar yet new. Thriving on contrast, texture and space, the Danish outfit’s full-length debut evokes a nocturnal, urban atmosphere perfect for listening on headphones late night.

yc’s first single “As the Leaves Unfold,” is a slow-burning and brooding tune that draws from and meshes elements of post rock, art rock, post punk, indie rock and shoegaze that captures an uneasy tension between the inner and outer worlds of its narrator with a precise attention to psychological realism. According to the band, “As the Leaves Unfold” is an exploration of “the small mysteries of everyday life,” and an optimism rooted in the belief that the most profound discovers of our lives can hide under the smallest of stones.

Adhering to long-held DIY ethos, the band accompany the new single with a completely self-made video, that features snippets of every day life full of symbolism — sunset at the beach, a major bicycle race, a boat ride in Arctic-like waters and more.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Total Wife Shares Woozy “second spring”

Over the past decade, the experimental Nashville-based duo Total Wife — Luna Kupper and Ash Richter — have firmly cemented as fixtures of both the Nashville and East Coast DIY scenes.

The duo’s fifth album, Come Back Down is slated for a September 25, 2025 release through Julia’s War Recordings. Come Back Down is the follow-up to 2023’s in/out and builds upon their varied and rich catalog, while featuring the previously released 0 EP tracks “naoisa,” and “(dead b).”

The album’s latest single “second spring” is a woozy track that features fuzzy and churning guitars paired with syrupy sweet, ethereal melodies. At its core, the song evokes both the hope of new beginnings and the unease and anxiousness of what those new beginnings will actually mean for you and your life.

“Ash started the lyrics for this song in early spring of 2020, and worked them out over the next few years before Luna wrote this song, which helped her finish them,” the Nashville-based duo explain. “Hard to remember, but flowers will bloom with or without you,” is from the same poem that “Reveal Sky,” was written from (total wife Self-Titled LP, “It’s easy to forget that it’s spring, staring through grey-blue drywall”).“

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 57th Birthday, Ed O’Brien!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Ed O’Brien’s 57th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 57th Birthday, Mike Patton!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Mike Patton’s 57th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 84th Birthday, Frank Zappa!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 84th anniversary of Frank Zappa’s birth.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 84th Birthday, John Lennon!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 84th anniversary of the birth of John Lennon.