JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 82nd anniversary of the birth of The Doors frontman Jim Morrison.
Tag: art rock
Throwback: Happy 69th Birthday, Peter Buck!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates R.E.M. co-founder and lead guitarist Peter Buck’s 69th birthday.
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.
Throwback: Happy 54th Birthday, Jonny Greenwood!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Radiohead’s and The Smile’s Jonny Greenwood’s 54th birthday.
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.
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.”
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 Interview: DahL’s Nassir Liselle
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms interviews DahL’s Nassir Liselle.
Throwback: Happy 56th Birthday, PJ Harvey!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates PJ Harvey’s 56th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 57th Birthday, Thom Yorke!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Thom Yorke’s 57th birthday.
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.
New Audio: Berlin’s Nilipek. Shares Expressive and Expansive “Yalan Söyledik”
Turkish-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter Nilipek. has developed a sound and approach that has shaped the landscape of Turkish language alternative music for the past decade. Her critically applauded debut, 2015’s Sabah marked the arrival of a unique voice in the scene.
Since then the Turkish-born, Berlin-based artist has continually evolved, exploring new textures and sonic landscapes. 2017’s Döngü and 2020’s Mektuplar found Nilipek. embracing a decided shift towards a richer, more layered sound that blended introspective lyrics with bold, experimental arrangements.
Her striking reinterpretations of Turkish classics like “Gözleri Aşka Gülen” and “Bir Gün Beni Arzularsan Gel” helped to further cement her reputation for reimagining familiar songs in unexpected ways. Building upon a growing profile, much of her work has appeared in popular TV and streaming series, like 2019’s One Love Two Lives and Halka which have helped introduce her sound to a much wider audience. She has also collaborated on several boundary-pushing efforts like “Castles” with French indie pop artist Oscar Anton and “Vazgeçtim” with Turkish producer Taner Yücel, expanding her creative universe beyond the lines of genre and geography.
Nilipek.’s fourth album, last year’s Uydurduğumuz Oyunlarla (“The Games We Made Up”) was arguably one of the more interactive and emotionally resonant batches of material she’s written and recorded to date that sees her weaving poetic Turkish lyrics with cinematic arrangements and haunting melodies.
Album single “Yalan Söyledik” manages to recall PJ Harvey and Juana Molina with the song being anchored around an expansive arrangement with cinematic flourishes paired with Nilipek.’s sultry delivery. The song evokes a complex and confusing emotional landscape with seemingly lived-in sensibility.
Throwback: Happy 58th Birthday, Philip Selway!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Philip Selway’s 58th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 80th Birthday, Pete Townshend!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Pete Townshend’s 80th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 77th Birthday, Grace Jones!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Grace Jones’ 77th birthday.