From London and Brighton
Recommended if you like Underworld, MGMT, Animal Collective
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The two singles released thus far by Ashnymph are hard to categorise: their own description of their music as “subconscioussion” doesn’t offer many clues. Debut Saltspreader married a jackhammer industrial beat – bandmember Will Wiffen has occasionally been spotted on stage wearing a T-shirt that bears the logo of industrial metal pioneers Godflesh – with vintage-sounding synthesisers and a guitar riff that vaguely recalls the Stooges’ garage rock perennial I Wanna Be Your Dog, before dissolving into a wall of disquieting noise. Its intended effect, the trio have suggested, was to evoke motorway travel, “the grinding circulation of vehicles 24-hours a day over huge distances … orange lights at night”.
Its follow-up, Mr Invisible, sits somewhere between club music and left-field alt-rock. On one hand, the track’s rhythm, layers of hypnotic electronics, and vocals that arrive either psychedelically smeared or hypnotically looped in a way that recalls Dubnobasswithmyheadman-era Underworld all point towards the dancefloor. On the other, its forceful live-sounding dynamics, edge-of-chaos quality and distortion – “making everything sound crunchy is a lifelong ambition,” Wiffen has said – mark it out as very much the work of a band rather than a bedroom-bound producer. They’ve been playing around south London’s DIY scene for less than a year, “anywhere that will turn the PA up loud”.
But both are exciting and different enough – from each other and anything else around at the moment – to make you wonder what Ashnymph might do next. Whatever it is, on the evidence of Saltspreader and Mr Invisible, it’s unlikely to be boring. Alexis Petridis
This week’s best new tracks
Dry Cleaning – Hit My Head All Day
“I simply must have experiences”, Florence Shaw decides on her band’s beguiling return, but across six minutes – with human breath marking time – you get the sense that she can’t work out why. BBT
Danny L Harle – Azimuth (ft Caroline Polachek)
Welding Evanescence goth drama to peak 90s trance – right down to the lyric “and I ask the rain” – Azimuth suggests dusting off your best Cyberdog wear and heading south west to rave, stat. LS
Robyn – Acne Studios mix
Robyn’s soundtrack for the Swedish designer’s SS26 show previews her TBA ninth album, including Soulwax-worthy grinding guitar, Benny Benassi-style thrust and the lyrics “my body’s a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive”. (It’s not on streaming: listen here.) LS
Jordana – Like That
We loved her soft rock album Lively Premonition last year and the US singer-songwriter continues to show off her stunning facility for chorus writing as she laments her latest hopeless infatuation. BBT
Molly Nilsson – Get a Life
The one-woman Swedish pop operation released her latest album Amateur this week, and this track from it is extraordinary: a synthetic guitar line jerks forward at hardcore punk pace as Nilsson demands we grab life by the scruff of the neck. BBT
Artemas – Superstar
After documenting jaded love and sex on his megahit I Like the Way You Kiss Me and its underrated parent mixtape Yustyna, the British-Cypriot star is wretchedly in thrall to his latest lover amid pulsating coldwave production. BBT
Jennifer Walton – Miss America
From one of the year’s standout debuts, a crushed synth hymnal about Walton learning of her father’s death in an airport hotel, tracing her uncanny surroundings in tender incantations: “Strip mall, drug deal, panic attacks.” LS
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