Tag: experimental electronica

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TOMORA Shares Mesmerizing “COME CLOSER”

TOMORA is a new collaborative project featuring:

  • The Chemical Brothers‘ Tom Rowlands: As one-half of The Chemical Brothers, Rowlands has produced and recorded six widely acclaimed UK #1 albums and won six Grammy Awards.

  • Norwegian artist AURORA: AUROR Ahas released four studio albums and has quickly become one of Norway’s most influential and globally recognized contemporary artists. Her single “Runaway” has amassed over one-billion Spotify streams to date.

TOMORA builds upon a creative relationship that can be traced to the recording sessions for The Chemical Brothers’ 2019 album No Geography. AURORA contributed vocals to three tracks, including “Eve of Destruction.” Rowlands then went on to contribute to AURORA’s 2024 effort, What Happened to the Heart?, which landed on the UK Top 10.

Initially, speculation was rife as to who — or what — the then-mysterious TOMORA was or could be, after the name appeared on Coachella’s 2026 Festival lineup post without any additional information last year. Last December, the duo released their debut single “Ring The Alarm,” which received praise from Spin, BrooklynVegan, Stereogum and DJ Mag. “Ring The Alarm” also received DJ support from Erol Alkan, ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U and a long list of others.

The duo’s TOMORA debut single was then released on a very limited and collectible white label vinyl, alongside B-side “The Thing,” which showcase a glimpse of the tender and hauntingly beautiful downtempo tracks that will appear on the duo’s full-length debut, COME CLOSER.

Slated for an April 17, 2026 release through Capitol Records, COME CLOSER was written and produced jointly by Rowlands and AURORA. The 12-song album sees the duo pairing the Norwegian artist’s distinctive vocal with the acclaimed British producer’s unparalleled studio expertise. While the album sees the duo creating their own unique space, somewhere they can produce the kind of magic that comes from flicking through a perfect record collection, flowing from wigged-out 1960s psychedelia to the hyper-futurism of sounds imagined for the 2060s.

Ultimately though, the album is less about two separate and distinct artists finding a fertile middle ground and more the sound of two tenacious individuals connecting in the studio and hitting massive creative peaks together.

“This is our album COME CLOSER, it is everything we dreamt of. We made it without obligation or expectation, just a joy in creation,” the duo says. “It’s the sound where we meet, the landing zone of our musical escape pods. It is a special place to us. We hope you dig it as much as we do.”

COME CLOSER‘s latest single, album title track “COME CLOSER” is a haunting, dreamily mesmerizing track featuring AURORA’s achingly yearning delivery ethereally floating over droning synths. But just under the hypnotizing surface is a sense of unease, perhaps even menace. As a YouTuber commented “I think this is how sirens in Greek mythology were supposed to sound — alluring and hypnotising at first, but once you listen long enough, you can hear the nightmare hiding behind the voice.” I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Produced and directed by Adam Smith and S T A R T !, the accompanying video for “COME CLOSER,” employs a relatively simple concept: Shot in a cinematic black and white, with eerie strobe lights, we see AURORA singing the song. Her appearance is simultaneously full of desperate yearning but also emphasizes the subtle sense of unsettling menace and unease.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Miss Grit Shares Dreamily Cinematic and Propulsive “Tourist Mind”

New York-based, Korean-American singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Margaret Sohn (they/she) is the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project Miss Grit. And with Miss Grit, Sohn has developed reputation for being a bold experimentalist and architect of sculptural texture. Defly moving between analog and digital instrumentation, the New York-based artist creates an immersive comms of sound with futuristic frameworks for their deeply probing and introspective lyricism and sound.

Sohn’s full-length debut, 2023’s Follow The Cyborg saw the New York-based artist building a fluid future beyond gender and genre binaries, where a non-human machine goes in pursuit of liberation. The album received praise from i-D Magazine and saw the Miss Grit creative mastermind profiled by Rolling Stone as an “Artist You Need To Know,” featured in DJ Magazine‘s “Get To Know” named as an “Artist to Watch” by BrooklynVegan, and named “Breaking” artist by FLOOD Magazine. And adding to a rapidly growing profile, they performed for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert‘s “#LateShowMeMusic” series.

“Tourist Mind” is the first bit of original material from Sohn’s Miss Grit project since the release of their critically applauded debut. Sonically, “Tourist Mind” sonically channels the likes of Goldfrapp and Portishead as a dreamily cinematic string arrangement is paired with oscillating synth bleeps, stomping and propulsive industrial techno-like beats. The production serves as a lush, dream pop-meets-trip hop-meets-techno bed for Sohn’s defiant delivery.

Throughout their career, Sohn often themself intrigued by other people’s inner worlds. Thematically, “Tourist Mind” sees Sohn meditating on the idea of self-erasure while embracing the power and intimacy of self-reliance and solitude. “It’s about how curiosity for other people’s thoughts can slowly disorient you and make it harder to return to yourself,” the Miss Grit mastermind says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Noble Rot (METZ’s and Weird Nightmare’s Alex Edkins and Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh) Share Restlessly Propulsive “Hang On”

Noble Rot — METZ‘s and Weird Nightmare‘s Alex Edkins and Holy Fuck‘s Graham Walsh — have returned with “Hang On,” the follow-up to the duo’s debut album, 2023’s Heavenly Bodies, Repetition, Control, which features collaborations with No Joy, Wire and Immersion‘s Colin Newman, Immersion’s Malka Spigel and Wintersleep‘s Loel Campbell.

“Hang On” pairs restlessly driving and hypnotic rhythms with painterly layers of whirring synths and a distorted guitar line to create a lush, endlessly morphing and subtly uneasy bed for Edkins’ catchy melodies. The new single reveals an outfit readily experimenting with and expanding their sound into new angles and directions.

The accompanying visual features some trippy artwork by Canadian artist Julie Fader.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Noble Rot (METZ’s Alex Edkins and Holy Fuck’s Graham Walsh) Return with Propulsive and Trippy “Medicine”

Noble Rot is a new collaborative studio project, featuring METZ‘s and Weird Nightmare’s Alex Edkins and Holy Fuck‘s Graham Walsh. The project can trace its origins back to 2011: Walsh was enlisted to produce METZ’s 2012 self-titled full-length debut. And since then, the pair have remained in a state of creative orbit. 

The duo’s full-length debut Heavenly Bodies, Repetition, Control saw its official release today through Joyful Noise. The album sees Edkins and Walsh joyously stepping outside and beyond the lines drawn by their previous work — with the album’s material being the culmination of a year’s worth of feverish studio experimentation influenced by film soundtracks, komische muzik, experimental noise, ambient, psychedelia, and more.

While their distinct musical sensibilities remain intact, Noble Rot provides the duo with a new vehicle for pushing their boundaries of sonic exploration. The album’s material will reward the listener with a songs filled to the brim with unbridled curiosity and boundless excitement — with the hopes that it’ll surprise and thrill both longtime fans and periphery lurkers alike. 

Last month, I wrote about “Casting No Light,” a densely layered soundscape featuring glistening and wobbling synths, hypnotic bass lines, spiraling and looping guitar lines, and motorik rhythms are paired with chanted mantra-like vocals. While effortlessly and seamlessly meshing the long-held creative instincts of its individual creators, “Casting No Light” is underpinned by a mischievous, almost childlike sense of adventure and an irresistible groove. And adding to the collaborative nature of the project, Wire‘s and Immersion‘s Colin Newman and Minimal Compact‘s and Immersion’s Malka Spigel lend a hand, contributing bass and heavily modulated guitars to the song’s motorik pulse — before closing out with bongo drums and howling synths. 

Heavenly Bodies, Repetition, Control‘s second and latest single “Medicine” may arguably be the album’s funkiest single. It’s built around a forceful motorik groove, skittering four-on-the-floor paired with off-kilter percussion, industrial screech, squeak and skronk and heavily distorted vocals buried in the mix. Much like its immediate predecessor, the song is rooted in a mischievous, childlike sense of experimentation that sees is collaborators adventurously pushing each other into a wild and trippy new direction.

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with John Smith, the accompanying video for “Medicine” featuring floating pills of varying sizes floating and undulating to the song’s motorik-meets-industrial pulse.

Heavenly Bodies, Reputation, Control is included in Joyful Noise’s The White Label Series. Currently in its sixth year, The White Label Series taps influential curators and creatives to shine a light on a previously unreleased album of their choice. This year’s list of curators is equally impressive as it includes Julian Baker, Sean Ono Lennon, Helado Negro, The Jesus Lizard‘s David Yow, Speedy Ortiz‘s Sadie Dupuis and No Joy‘s Jasmine White-Gluz, who chose Noble Rot’s debut for the series. 

“Graham Walsh and Alex Edkin’s new musical partnership captures what I love most about their other musical endeavors (Holy Fuck, Metz); expansive production, musical moments of anxiety and calmness, unexpected earworms,” White-Gluz says of choice. “I love records like this that make me go ‘how did they make that sound?!’ and relisten to a song over and over.“

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Deriving their name from the French word for coffin, cercueil, French experimental electro pop duo Cercueil — Pénélope Michel and Nicolas Devos — formed back in 2005 and features two extraordinarily talented members: one members attended the National School of Fine Arts near Lille, France, and was a member of math rock outfit Milgram; the other studied music theory while also playing in experimental performance groups.

Their debut EP released back in 2006 went largely unnoticed, but their full-length debut, 2009’s Shoo Straight Shout won them quite a bit of attention with the album being released to critical acclaim. That led to the band winning a Best Newcomer Award at the Qwartz Electronic Music Awards. Shoo Straight Shout saw the duo firmly establishing a sound that draws from coldwave, New Wave, krautrock, techno and trip-hop among others.

The French duo’s sophomore album, 2011’s Erostrate saw the band adding elements of dark techno to their sound. Around this time, the band had begun building an international profile with touring across Belgium, Germany, UK, Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, The Netherlands and even North America — with stops on the international festival circuit., including The Great Escape, Transmusicales de Rennes, Printemps de Bourges and M Pour Montréal. Adding to a growing profile, they opened for Alan Vega and WhoMadeWho.

Released through Clivage Music, the duo’s latest EP Bad Posture is influenced by Nina Childress’ paintings, Charles Freger’s anthropological photos, the films of Michel Haneke, David Lynch and Kenneth Anger, as well as the the works of Black Dice, The Knife, Harmonia, Kraftwerk and Onoehtrix Point Never. Letting their creative process guide them throughout, Michel and Davos went whenever the music took them while forbidding nothing — to a point that they were frequently surprised by the directions the material went. “We don’t really think about where it is we want to take things. Often, we develop our sound based on our experience and familiarity with our instruments, and just let things flow depending on the track, the sounds. That is what directs things, more than an actual conscious thought,” the French duo explain. That wild, unpredictable creative freedom is infused throughout the EP.

“Suchness,” Bad Posture‘s latest single is a hypnotic mix of propulsive tribal beats, trip-hop, industrial techno and atmospheric synths centered around a relentless motorik groove. Michel’s ethereal vocal glides over a menacing and uneasy production that sounds like it would rock a club in the year 2222 — if humans and clubs are still a thing by then.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Camila Fuchs’ Brooding and Uneasy “Mess”

(WARNING: If you have epilepsy, this video employs the use of constant and repetitive flashes that could be dangerous to watch. )

Lisbon-based electro pop duo Camila Fuchs — Camila De Laborde and Daniel Hermann-Collini — formed in London back in 2012. With the release of their first two, critically applauded albums, 2016’s Singing From Fixed Rung and 2018’s Heart Pressed Between Stones, the Lisbon-based electro pop duo quickly established their sound and approach: experimental electro pop with spectral vocals and avant-garde sensibilities. Adding to a growing profile, the members of Camila Fuchs have opened for the likes of Plaid, Actress, Aleksi Perälä, Starcrawler, Charles Hayward, William Basinski, BRAIDS and The Orb — and they’ve played sets at festivals like Mutek Mexico, Primavera Sound and All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Last year’s Peter Kember (a.k.a. Sonic Boom)-produced Kids Talk Sun was recorded near the sea, wilderness and misty, castle-peaked hills of Sintra, just outside of Lisbon. During the recording sessions, the members of the acclaimed Lisbon-based duo shifted back and forth between the wilderness and the studio. And as a result, the album’s nine songs thematically is an abstract meditation on childhood that touches upon the exchanges between humans and humans and nature. Imbued with a youthful sense of light and wonder, Kids Talk Sun sonically finds the duo sonically reimagining natural phenomena in sonic form.

Kids Talk Sun’s latest single “Mess” is a mesmerizing yet uneasy track, centered around brooding and atmospheric electronics, crunchy and skittering beats, shimmering synth arpeggios and achingly plaintive vocals. While sonically the song may draw some comparisons to Bjork, it manages to evoke the sensation of something creeping from out the shadows, of a slow-burning anxious dread that you can’t quite put a finger on.

“‘Mess’ brings the shadows. It’s the lonely place from where to watch. A social heartbreak where one doesn’t fit in and is always shifting trying to find connections,” the Lisbon-based electro pop duo explain in press notes. “It’s about the lack of communication and the possible void that it can create. It’s about language as the way to get to know each other. It’s such a precise tool. If we don’t use it, are we truly getting to know each other? ‘Love is where we go first with the word but it’s not just about something light and happy and pleasurable. The word calls us deep, deep responsibilities,’ said Elizabeth Alexander. This song is about a place where we’ve all been. It welcomes the sharing, the questioning, the urge and nature of talking, it’s about being open to actively get to know each other.”

Directed by Camia Fuchs’ Camila De Laborde and her sister Manueal De Laborde is an equally brooding and uneasy visual, featuring the duo holding weirdly shaped cut outs in rapidly flashing strobe light, split with footage of the duo standing in front of a plain brick wall. Of course, as the duo move through the flashing strobes, they move about it in a slow motion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Brooklyn’s Wetware Releases a Stark and Menacing New Single

Formed back in 2015, the Brooklyn-based industrial electronica outfit Wetware– Roxy Farman and Matt Morandi — quickly developed a reputation for odd and unpredictable live shows, which they further established with the release of their full-length debut, 2018’s Automatic Drawing. Slated for a June 26, 2020 release through Dais Records, the Brooklyn-based duo’s forthcoming sophomore album, the 11 track Flail reportedly captures disorientating confusion with a concentrated, nosier sound that pushes and pulls against electronic textures paired with frenetically delivered vocals. The end result is material that’s wild and unhinged sonic collage-like dirges.  

“Shiny Face,” Flail’s latest single is a sparse yet menacing track centered around droning synths, relentless clang and clatter and shouted vocals. And while drawing heavily from both industrial electronica and No Wave, the track manages to evoke the anxious unease and paranoia of our contemporary moment, a moment in which there’s no solutions, no answers and no ideas in the face of our near annihilation. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Caroline Mason’s Surreal and Minimalist Visual for Brooding “If You Want Me To”

Caroline Mason is an emerging, Portland, OR-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and experimental electronic music artist, who from an early age has been drawn to find a connection between the depths of human emotion and how must has the ability to take us to those places within ourselves. 

Mason’s latest single “If You Want Me To” is a brooding yet atmospheric song centered around a sinuous bass line, reverb and delay pedaled guitar, gently accumulating layers of wobbling, arpeggiated synths, Mason’s plaintive vocals and an infectious, ear worm of a hook. Sonically recalling Us-era Peter Gabriel, the song thematically touches upon honestly facing oneself and pushing away old habits, old fears and old selves for a bold new future. 

Directed by filmmaker and stylist Christal Angelique, the recently released video was inspired by English fashion designer Gareth Pugh and finds Mason dressed up in a custom, futuristic piece made by Portland-based designer Kate Towers. And in the video we see Mason in the desert, accompanied by a marching army of her doppelgängers. Angelique wanted the piece to be relatable for anyone facing fears and parts of themselves that needed to go. “It is about overcoming the battles within so one can move into their stronger, future self,” Mason says of the song.  

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Internationally acclaimed, Amsterdam-based electronic trio Cubicolor, founding members and 16BL production duo Ariann Olierook and Peter Kriek and London-born singer/songwriter Tim Digby-Bell, features a lineup of accomplished musicians and producers:

  • Olierook, who acts as the public face of the Cubicolor and 16BL has been writing and recording music professional over the past 20 years — and has toured globally for the past 15 years. Described as a “student of music” by his Cubicolor bandmate Tim Digby-Bell, Olierook has developed reputation both within the project and without as constantly learning, honing techniques, restlessly experimenting and trying new ideas and building his own instruments. including custom modular synths, mixing decks and speakers that trio uses for their recording sessions.
  • Digby-Bell is a London-born singer/songwriter, poet and playwright, who began to learn the guitar when he turned seven — and when he was growing up, he was heavily influenced by Nick Drake and others. Before he joined the Amsterdam-based electronic act, the British singer/songwriter was best known for being in London-based indie quintet Duologue.

    Duologue quickly became a buzzworthy act with their earliest releases, and as a result, they wound up signing to a major label. Sadly, while on their first Stateside tour – a momentum and career building tour, at that – one of Digby-Bell’s bandmates was diagnosed with leukemia. With an uncertain future looming in front of them, the band spilt up. Since the band’s breakup, that now-former bandmate has recovered from his illness.

    Roughly two years after Duologue split up, Digby-Bell was introduced to Olierook and Kriek and after collaborating with the duo on “Falling,” became a permanent member of Cubicolor in 2016.

  • Kriek is the most mysterious and enigmatic member of the act. He grew up outside of Amsterdam, attended university and started a successful IT company while co-founding 16BL and Cubicolor with Olierook. Roughly 15 years ago, Kriek decided to withdraw from much of normal life, leaving his company and living a monastic-like and solitary life on a houseboat, which doubled as recording studio.

    Reportedly, Kriek doesn’t listen to much modern music and is generally unreceptive to new ideas – and although his living situation and habits are challenging to deal with, his 16BL and Cubicolor bandmates will openly admit that he has an non-Western ear for melody and is one of the most talented musicians and producers they’ve ever met or worked with.

Since Cubicolor’s formation in 2014, the act has released three EPs and a handful of singles through Anjunadeep Records that found the act’s sound moving from progressive house to experimental electronica. The acts breakthrough,  full-length debut Brainsugar was heavily supported by Spotify‘s Austin Kramer, Pete Tong, Joris Voorn and Kölsch, received airplay throughout the UK and KCRW and received critical praise from Mixmag, RA, Thump, Consequence of Sound and DJ Mag, which gave the album a 9/10 review. Brainsugar album tracks were remixed by Patrice Baumel, Lindstrom and Prins Thomas— and those tracks received support and play in clubs. And adding to a growing profile, the album has amassed over 40 million streams globally.

In 2018, the band had written, recorded and finished what was supposed to be their sophomore full-length album Trick of Light. The album was delivered to their label and to the digital streaming platforms. A full press campaign for the album was planned and then shortly before the official announcement of the album, the band decided to cancel release and scrap the album. Three album singles were released off the canceled album — “No Dancers,” “Counterpart,” and “Boxed Out.” “Counterpart” received airplay on the BBC Radio 1 programs of Annie Mac, Pete Tong, Phil Taggart and Kölsh. Adam Port’s remix of “No Dancers” was a club hit. “We got home and listened to it, then got on the phone with each other and decided to drop the whole thing,” the band’s Tim Digby-Bell recalls in press notes. “The next week, we went back into the studio and started again. We didn’t keep anything, we shut ourselves on the boat in Amsterdam where we work and didn’t stop until we made the record we wanted to make.

“There were a lot of moments when we weren’t sure we’d ever find what it was we were looking for,” Digby-Bell continues. “On the way, we lost friends, lost loves, battled health issues, lost an album, lost each other and came back together again Looking back now, it was pretty crazy but the world keeps spinning and I guess we just don’t want to put out anything that wasn’t true to ourselves as a band, and the very best we can do as musicians, no matter how long it took.”

The trio’s latest album, the long-awaited, Hardly A Day, Hardly A Night is partially inspired by the seemingly endless cycles of space and time and is centered around an unwavering dedication to earnestness of emotion and purpose. Thematically, the album themes at points are more personal than others — in fact, Digby-Bell written single “Points Beyond” is a loving tribute to a dear friend of his, who died last year. Other album tracks are meant to evoke the uncertainty and fear that the band felt during the writing and recording process. Overall, the album’s material paints an intimate and provocative picture of the trio’s evolution as artists and as people.

“Rituals,” Hardly A Day, Hardly A Night‘s latest single is centered around looping and twinkling piano, thumping beats, Digby-Bell’s plaintive vocals, shimmering synth arpeggios blasts and a soaring hook. And while sonically bearing a resemblance to Floating Points and Bonobo, the track manages to be cinematic and remarkably intimate.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Good Fuck Returns with an Atmospheric New Single

Late last year, I wrote about Good Fuck, a self-described exploration of experimental literary techniques and adventurous production and beats, comprised of Tim Kinsella, a Chicago, IL-based musician, author and film director, who’s best known for stints in a number of bands, including Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Make Believe, Owls, Friend/Enemy, Everyoned and others, and for an extensive solo career, releasing material under the name Tim Kinsella(s) and Jenny Pulse an electronic music producer and artist, who has released two full-length albums — 2017’s Spa Moans/Obedient Vibrations and  Marmalade, which was released earlier this year. 

Seeking an intimate creative environment to develop their aesthetic and sound, the duo decided that they needed to be in total isolation. “We packed the car and drove 13 hours to The Millay Colony in upstate New York: an artist’s colony in The Berkshires, miles down a private road, next to 100,000 acres of national forest,” Kinsella says in press notes. As soon as they arrived, the couple devised a unique artistic process to work from. Described by Kinsella as a “collaborative conscious alignment,” lyric writing was centered around 12 books, including Don Quixote, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and others that the couple felt were relevant. Then they came up with various systems to collapse and collage them into each other in different combinations. The result was a sort of literary mash up in which content and structure were scrambled into a totally new product. “We might take the form of an Eskimo genesis myth, but use words from Anaïs Nin,” Kinsella explains.

Sonically speaking, the project draws from Kinsella’s extensive background in genre-pushing rock and Pulse’s ear for minimalist electronic sounds — and interestingly enough, they managed such an artistic symbiosis together that “To a large degree we don’t even know who programmed what beat, and who programmed what synth line,” Kinsella reflects.  According to Kinsella, he and Pulse were “stunned” by what they had created, the entire process was far from perfect. “Of course there were snags, technological and psychological. And of course we threw a good amount away. But what was left was not the result of trying to write songs, but the effortless evidence of what emerged when we got clear in our intentions and then just let it out,” Kinsella says. 

Now, as you may recall, the self titled album’s first single “Secret Meetings” was centered around a minimalist electronic production featuring whirring, buzzing and industrial clang and clatter, brief blasts of arpeggiated synths, chanted lyrics and a sensual and sweaty groove — with the end result being a track that was esoteric and cryptic, wildly adventurous and yet accessible. Interestingly, “Jenny Dreams of Pies,” the self-titled album’s second and latest single is a slow-burning, atmospheric track with thumping beats and glitchy electronics. Sonically speaking the song nods at The Fragile-era Nine Inch Nails and The Beat Escape’s Life’s Short The Answer is Long — but while superficially placid, the song possesses a tense and anxious undertone, that gives the song a nightmarish feel.