Browsing Tag

Alternative electronic

The debut darkwave IDM LP, Evolution // Rebirth, Submerged Starleen into the Hallucinatory Depths of Electronic Futurism

Posted on 25 September 2026

Starleen’s debut album, Evolution // Rebirth, inhabits the point where electronic futurism starts developing a soul of its own. In their most ambitious sonic project to date, the Dallas duo pursued a dark, dystopian art-house direction through glitchy breakbeats, swathes of caustic dread and ethereally soulful vocals which haunt the psyche long beyond the run time of the masterstroke of an LP.

Modernity provides one of the album’s most potent manifestations of Starleen’s irreplicable aesthetic. Psychedelically charged synths flicker through the mix with strobing fervour as fractured rhythms send the production spiralling deeper into hallucinatory electronic futurism. The vocals retain a spectral humanity amid all that circuitry, carrying an emotional presence which gives Starleen’s spiritually cyber sound its psychological gravity. Fans of Sevdaliza, FKA twigs, iamamiwhoami and Purity Ring should find plenty to sink into here.

Their visual ambitions have travelled alongside the music. The video for Right Back previously secured a festival award in India, while Evolution // Rebirth has been selected for October’s Dallas International Film Festival.

If, like Starleen, you’re blessed and blighted with aesthetic sensitivity, you’ll find that Evolution // Rebirth is a place of sanctuary, where every element co-exists in harmony, even if that euphony is caustically cut. It’s not often that I can describe music as sensually cerebral, but if Starleen fit in any pigeonhole, it is that incredibly niche one.

Evolution // Rebirth is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast.

Jordan Fox’s EBENEZER is the most in-vogue alt-electronica odyssey you’ll ever hear

Posted on 27 June 2026

Following a prelude which sits between the score to a Tarantino flick and the aural aesthetics of histrionic theatre, EBENEZER by JORDAN FOX keeps the juxtapositions equally avant-garde within its adrenalised alt-electronica mix. Hints of Eastern rhythm drift through frenetic synth pop against dreamy diaphanous motifs, allowing the release to breathe and ebb under the hypnotically lush vocals.

After the intro, the divide between your consciousness and the ingenious, syncopated euphonic rushes of ecstasy in EBENEZER is practically a façade of a veil. The bass-heavy low end and percussion lock into your nervous system, while lighter, transcendent tones surrounding his choir-esque harmonic stretches give your soul freedom to explore new territory, one marked in awe for what JORDAN FOX brings to the airwaves through infinite imagination and genre-mashing syntheses of sound.

The Los Angeles-based media composer, producer and songwriter folds years of fashion-world composition into a debut single that wrestles with the fear of devoting your life to something while watching love, milestones and meaning slip past unnoticed. With electronic and orchestral textures expanding around his voice, plus a Shauna Presto-directed video featuring choreography for eight dancers, EBENEZER feels built as a full sensory event. The vocal performance alone is enough to put him on the proverbial map. Hopefully, this in-vogue odyssey isn’t too cerebral to go viral.

EBENEZER is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

K8 – System Error: DnB-Driven Alt-Electronica for the Matrix-Breaking Masses

Posted on 26 June 2026

K8’s waves of DnB-driven alt-electronica experimentation are becoming harder to ignore; she created a sonic riptide with System Error, featuring James Getting. The South London artist, shaped by Spanish and Italian roots, pulled drum and bass, jungle, alternative hip-hop, rock guitars and atmospheric synth pressure into a dystopian release with a cinematic voltage that wires straight into the nervous system.

As an alt-electronica artist who always refuses to temper the intellect, wit and metaphoric power of her lyrics, System Error marks K8 at a poignant zenith. She pulls everyone who feels the shockwaves of System Error out of the static of sleepwalk and forces them to see past the illusion, past the navel-gazing and into the rubble left by propaganda, division and manufactured oppression.

James Getting, lead guitarist of The Divide, brings his guitar into full force, proving that caustic guitar riffs have just as much of a place in alt-electronica as they do rock and metal. Inspired by the adrenaline of Chase & Status’ Control, System Error carries breakbeats, heavy electric pressure and a filmic atmosphere somewhere between Stranger Things and Alice in Wonderland.

K8’s vocals take on a South London-tinged, ethereally animatronic affect, yet her words refuse to sit on the surface level of your synapses. You can’t help but reach the outro feeling freer than when you dove into the kinetic protest track.

System Error is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Bask in the Glow of Neon-Stroked Darkwave Electronica Desire with ‘Something Real’ by Dead Orchards

Posted on 19 March 2026

This Was Always Yours by Dead Orchards

Dead Orchards sharpened their knives for the stabbing synth lines in Dead Orchards’ standout installation of darkwave electronica, Something Real, taken from the recently released LP This Was Always Yours. The UK two-piece have always gravitated towards darker sonic palettes, yet Something Real feels like the moment where their macabre sense of romance crystallises into something fully realised and irresistibly nocturnal.

The duo may reside in the UK, yet their sound in Something Real feels far more befitting of a backroom in Berghain. It hits every stylistic mark expected of the darkwave electronica sphere without ever giving the impression that Dead Orchards sacrificed their own originality to arrive there. Instead, the track thrives in a deliciously dark, neon-stroked feat of harbingering that carries its own atmosphere with unmistakable confidence.

Stylistic pulses borrowed from post-punk flicker through, though the song steers clear of the genre’s colder edges, allowing Something Real to glow with a pale luminescence, like a love letter signed in neon and slipped beneath a flickering club light. Lustfully diaphanous and affectionately resolute, the track moves through its shadowy textures with a level of intoxication that could lead to a hangover.

Dead Orchards began life as an acoustic outfit before gradually steering their songwriting towards darker electronic terrain. Writing, recording and producing everything independently, the duo have steadily developed a sound that sits comfortably between alternative electronica, darkwave and dream pop. With This Was Always Yours, their fourth album, that evolution sharpens further, making their hooks more effacious than ever.

Something Real is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

OLI GOSH V NAIVE MACHINE ALBUM RELEASE: SILVA

Posted on 27 May 2018

The wait is over as UK alternative electronic artist Oli Gosh joins forces with London based producer Naive Machine to drop their highly anticipated Techno influenced EP SILVA.

Oli Gosh started out as an actress. Following completion of her training in RADA, she began taking such acting roles as Juliet in the Shakespeare classic, Romeo and Juliet and Dirty Dancing in the west end.

Owing to the fact that she had always been passionate about music, she’d take up her guitar and go jamming during quiet periods. In no time, she became seriously involved in a band with her brother and friends, it was at that moment she switched career, and chose music over acting.

Oli Gosh who claims she felt so alive and at home for the first time in her life while on the Dancefloor of Amnesia in Ibiza, where she discovered Techno music, decided to embrace the genre and create music along that path.

Soon enough she began writing and performing with Danglo, a south east London act. She then met with Naive Machine, and they worked tirelessly to create the EDM masterpiece SILVA which was released on the 14^th of May.

The EP has Oli Gosh passionately sing from deep within over a Naive Machine’s impressive analogue synth based multi-layered production. Her ethereal voice on the EP is distinct, majestic and startlingly emotive as it goes smoothly over her collaborator and producer’s orchestra of synths.

Featuring a dark pulsing intensity layered over a heart of flamenco stamenco samples, the first track on the EP SILVA is a metaphor for the mercurial mix of love, lust, passion and pain that one longs and dreads to experience.

No kidding, this is an EP you should listen to if you’re a fan of electronic dance music. The EP is available for streaming on Spotify. Go check it out on here https://open.spotify.com/album/0PqHRPwrluAHlxxBu1DKpc

SILVA is the debut album from Oli Gosh, and she assures fans of the fact that more breathtaking releases are underway to follow throughout the year.