Safi Bugel's experimental album of the month

The Guardian

21-03-2025

In recent years, there's been a real appetite for a certain strain of hazy, quietly off-kilter pop made by classically trained musicians who favour a more DIY approach. Think Astrid Sonne, ML Buch or Tirzah, all of whom have put out records that are simultaneously cosy and jarring. Affectionately, the debut album by Raisa K, has a similar blueprint: simple melodies, unaffected vocals and scrappy production.
The formula makes sense: K is a longstanding member of the pop-not-pop group Good Sad Happy Bad, and the record enlists some of the key players from that world: bandmates Marc Pell and Mica Levi (also Tirzah's producer) plus friend and collaborator Coby Sey. Here K takes the lead, exploring the mundanity of love, trust and tension with unembellished candour. The lyrics are unshowy – the kind of nonchalant sentiment you might jot down in your Notes app.
These 12 short tracks are almost entirely laptop-produced, and each one is as wonky as it is soft and hooky, with an industrial crunch looming over a sweet sentiment, or a rickety Midi loop throwing off an otherwise-steady rhythm. Even with their simple mechanics and clear shared scene DNA, K's songs are striking. Feel It is especially hefty, with its confrontational vocals, clattering percussion and dense low-end frequencies. That weight carries into the more stripped-back interludes, as in the gorgeous, tender Stay. Standouts like As It Seems, or the more peppy Step, are also brilliant in a different way, as moreish as chart music from a parallel universe.
The record was apparently written in snatches in K's schedule: mid-commute, during work breaks, watching her kids at the playground. It's a small detail that captures the album's strength: it celebrates a kind of everyday intimacy, one that's messy and unpredictable.
Don Kashew has been crafting percussive, downtempo rhythms in a corner of the internet for some time. This month, the Zurich-based producer adds to the canon with Bellows (Subject to Restrictions), a collection of hypnotic, almost eerie, tracks, where neo-folk woodwind instruments wind around swampy synthesisers. In 2017, Japanese experimental musician and former punk Posuposu Otani relocated to the mountains of Kanagawa to explore his connection to nature through the medium of throat singing and the Jew's harp. On his self-titled debut album (33-33), we hear those guttural, gurgling sounds offset against gentle melodies: a strangely relaxing listen. There's another strong debut from Horse Vision. Another Life (inadvertent.index) presents the Stockholm duo's exciting brand of midwestern emo and country music for the online age. Think soft guitars and sad-boy lyrics, complete with Auto-Tune, scruffy electronic flourishes and an MIA reference.