Los Angeles-based multifaceted producer, singer/songwriter, bassist, performer, restless performer and JOVM mainstay Sylvia Black will be releasing her long-awaited new album, the 11-song Shadowtime on Friday, January 16, 2026.
The album reportedly sees Black continuing her long-held approach of songwriting from the bottom up. “I find a beat that I’m in love with and go forward,” Black says. “The bass provides the floor, but as a singer, I’m also coming in with the roof. If you can write a beautiful song with just those two elements, bass notes and the voice, that’s a job well done.”
Written, produced and performed primarily by the JOVM mainstay, the album was crafted with support from longtime mix engineer and creative foil Ruddy Lee Cullers. The album’s material is a haunting exploration of nostalgia and futurism that also sees the Los Angeles-based artist body pushing her sound in new directions by weaving hypnotic rhythms, cinematic layers and raw, visceral emotion, while moving effortlessly from dance floor anthems to atmospheric meditations on love, loss and transcendence. “This album is about finding beauty in ruins,” Black says. “About letting the shadows speak through me. Returning to California brought out the memory and soul of my goth days gone by.”
Shadowtime will feature the album singles “Talking in Tongues,” and “Long Gone Gardens,” both of which were released last year. The JOVM mainstay begins 2026 with album opening track “The Snake,” a synth-driven song anchored around a motorik groove and industrial thump paired with Black’s beguiling vocal and hypnotic countermelodies. The result is song that sounds much like a sultry, club friendly take on the likes of Suicide that showcases Black’s unerring knack for razor sharp, remarkably catchy hooks.
“The album opens with the fall of mankind or the awakening and the struggle with the birth pangs to traverse into a new paradigm for better or worse. You decide,” Black explains. “Apparently it’s a choose your own adventure and this is the story of those and their choice.”
The accompanying video was shot and edited by Black, and features mind-bending animation that ties into the album’s overall themes and zeitgeist. “A deadline, no plan, a green sheet sloppily tacked to the side of a barn way out in Virginia, and some holiday time with my fussy old laptop,” Black says of the video.
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