Browsing Tag

trip-hop

Wavy Tranquillity and Cinematic Vocals Carry ‘Only You’ by Srujanika Beyond Pop Convention

Posted on 11 June 2026
Srujanika

Srujanika’s standout single, Only You, breezed onto the airwaves as a salve for the senses. The atmospherically emotive earworm is lush with the reverb of an 80s pop ballad and just as sultry as a 90s alt-indie-pop smoking gun of a single, polished off with the kind of wavy tranquillity that strips the weight right off your soul. It is a hit that leaves all the right marks, stretching itself across six minutes of slow-blooming intimacy with the confidence of an artist fully aware of the world she is building.

Her creative command is so clear that it shimmers through the extended single. Refusing to fall in line with past and present trends, Srujanika uses her vocals to drive the single forward, the trip-hop and leftfield-electronica-adjacent instrumentals following behind, swaying in the breeze of temperate soul, intimate lyricism and oceanic passion.

There is a rare kind of patience in Only You, the kind that lets desire breathe until it starts to feel elemental. The production glides, allowing her voice to hold the centre as synth-washed textures, shadowed percussion and glacial romanticism gather around it. Srujanika gives the track its emotional weather, pulling 80s gloss, 90s alt-pop smoke and future-facing electronic soul into a release that feels weightlessly immersive.

Stream Only You here.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Desire as Diagnosis in NVIY’s masterstroke of alt-RnB quiessence, ‘INFECTED’

Posted on 27 March 2026
NVIY

NVIY is set to start a new endemic of desire with her hypnotically cathartic alt-RnB single, INFECTED. Within the release, the quiescence of dream pop tempers the motifs of 8Bit-adjacent soundscapes while never compromising on the escapism of the meandering melodies, which reach the pinnacle of immersivity as the singer-songwriter experiments with the signatures of 90s electronic trip-hop and leftfield electronica, finding moments to send shockwaves of reverberant turbulence through the artfully arcane release.

Built on deep bass and synth textures, the track moves with a slow, deliberate weight, mirroring the feverish atmosphere that inspired its creation. Written while physically ill, the concept of infection becomes metaphor, desire as something that settles into your system and refuses to leave, something you almost welcome despite knowing the consequences. The chorus deepens rather than releases, the vocals becoming fuller and more enveloping, reinforcing the sense of emotional and physical immersion that runs through the track.

Based in Los Angeles and fully self-directed in her creative process, writing, producing, mixing and shaping her own visual world, NVIY approaches her music with a level of control that keeps everything firmly within her aesthetic universe. Previously featured by several major blogs and magazines, she continues to refine her dark, slow-burning alt-RnB sound with INFECTED, a release that feels immersive, feverish and emotionally consuming in equal measure.

INFECTED is now available on all major streaming platforms via this link. 
Review by Amelia Vandergast

BURN slow-burn through emotional collapse in their disarming trip-hop triumph, Night

Posted on 20 January 2026

The new single from BURN, Night, arrives incandescent with etherealism and loaded with enough reverb-washed retro synths to send any trip-hop devotee sideways. As the second single lifted from their LP Chopped and Shattered, it marks a defining moment for the project, teasing a record shaped by single-word titles, poetic motifs, and a narrative stitched together across nine tracks. Within seconds, Night shows BURN’s fixation on intent; every element sits exactly where it needs to, sculpted with a razor-sharp blade and stripped of anything ornamental, leaving an intoxicating structure where vocals and instrumentals move as one.

Night foregoes the usual softness associated with downtempo electronica, reaching instead for retro-futurism that feels almost psychoactive. Fresh blood flows through the torrid oscillations which juxtapose the iridescent harmonies, creating a push-pull tension designed to keep you on edge. BURN designed it to disarm, and you feel that in the swell of unsettling emotion that creeps under your skin while the synthesised club house euphoria takes hold. The chopped vocal samples, a recurring motif across the album, shimmer through the mix like fragments of memory, acting as both texture and narrative device.

The lyricism across the album forms its own poetic archive, and Night’s closing line, “it smells like ash”, makes the whole project feel cyclical. Love, in all its heavy and contradictory emotions, sits at the heart of BURN’s vision. Night seals that world with an eerily serene finality, offering a slow-burning climax that lingers long after the track fades. For fans of trip-hop that leans into mood, metaphor and meticulousness, Night is the exact kind of fever-dream worth sinking into.

Night is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify and YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

ZKIN smoked through the shadows of lust in the artfully hypnotic single, Temptation

Posted on 8 January 2026

ZKIN closed out another year of leaving an indelible mark on the underground indietronica scene with the seductive standout single, Temptation, taken from their latest EP, Alibi. PJ Harvey fans will want to eat their rhythmic pulses out to the deliciously moody cut that captures the lasciviousness of lust when it curls its way around a habit that should have been buried years ago. The titular temptation isn’t brushed aside or resisted here; it’s indulged, smoked through, and sung into a haze.

ZKIN translated the shadowplay of desire into a session of pure hypnosis, with flurries of neo-classic piano keys dancing over swooning 80s pop-rock guitars, all winding into a trip-hopped diorama of longing. The groove coils slowly, but never aimlessly, weaving Malin’s rich vocals through the brooding textures. The emotional weight is there in every breath..

Since 2023, ZKIN has swerved away from conventional paths, building their own terrain of sonic and visual experimentation. The collaboration with Simon Söderberg as producer opened new dimensions, and the mixing and mastering from industry heavyweights elevated their instinctively underground instincts to cinematic heights. Jonas’s roots in sleaze-punk, jazz, and 60s psychedelia flicker through the edges, while Malin’s grounding in soul and raw vocal emotiveness carries the band’s sonic disobedience into something far more vulnerable and corporeal.

We were already circling their orbit, but Temptation pulled us straight into the gravitational centre of ZKIN.

Temptation is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

When I See Your Eyes by PostOmnis: A Lynchian Transmutation of Trip-Hop Desire

Posted on 20 December 2025

In PostOmnis’ new single, When I See Your Eyes, featuring Evangile, the electronica project of California-based multi-platform creator Seán Graves rips the spine out of traditional romantic balladry and reconstructs it in the surrealist theatre of Mysticism, his forthcoming full-length album. Rather than settle for familiar loops and trite emotion, this track destabilises. It seduces, then disorients. It speaks in haunted riddles rather than rhythmic comforts.

The track unfolds like a haunted sermon, stitched together with glitch-splintered syncopation and spectral vocal lines which nod toward IAMX’s celestial electronica. Graves and Evangile thread shards of retro synths through a mist of reverberating ambience, then let the composition twitch and hum with experimental leftfield touches. You’ll hear disconcerting laughter where most would place a drum fill, and feel the shadows of ghosted beats long after they’ve faded. This isn’t a love song – it’s a transmission from the warped ether of grief, longing, and abstraction.

As a preview of PostOmnis’ upcoming album Mysticism, When I See Your Eyes hints at a wider conceptual depth. Known for cultivating dark, immersive sonic environments in earlier cult releases like Ghost and Ashes and Kaleidoscope World, Graves builds on that foundation here with more pointed disfigurement of genre and mood. This track invites you into a Lynchian netherworld where desire becomes data and harmony is skewed by spectres.

When I See Your Eyes is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Musematic unravelled compositional electronica into a cosmos of texture and transcendence in Oxblood & Olive (2025 Remaster)

Posted on 26 November 2025
Oxblood & Olive (2025 Remaster) by Musematic

Musematic has long since perfected the art of aural convention before pushing beyond the arbitrary parameters that define it, resulting in his 2025 remaster of Oxblood & Olive feeling like standing in the middle of an oceanic current of leftfield ingenuity.

The soundscape ripples with a similar sense of progression found in chiptune melodies, but instead of polyphonic discordance, there’s a serene cosmology of tones, textures, and colours that spiral through the synapses, implanting heady doses of catharsis and escapism. The forward motion within the track never falters; every rhythm and motif feels magnetised towards transcendence, even as the syncopated trip-hop beats pull the listener gently back to earth.

The instrumental’s motion is tidal, evolving without urgency yet never static. Each layer builds and recedes, allowing you to drift into its compositional narrative without losing sense of direction. There’s precision in the looseness, intention in the abstraction, and an awareness of momentum that gives Oxblood & Olive its meditative gravity. The track’s remastered form doesn’t simply revisit old ground; it expands upon it, refining the alchemy that makes Musematic’s work feel simultaneously human and otherworldly.

Based in California, Musematic (the project of Evan Michael Brown) describes his sound as “compositional electronic” — music that tells stories rather than just looping ambience. After achieving immense success with over fifty million Spotify plays for his ambient work, he began this project to explore something more personal, more rhythmically alive. In Oxblood & Olive (2025 Remaster), he reaches that ideal with effortless lucidity, allowing his musemes — those minimal units of musical meaning — to collide and form constellations of sound.

Oxblood & Olive (2025 Remaster) is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Bandcamp. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

My Life as a Moth turned post-punk into a shadow-drenched rite of sonic intoxication in Hyenas

Posted on 5 November 2025

Fans of PINS, Portishead, She Drew the Gun, Lydia Lunch, and PJ Harvey will instantly be arrested by the cinematically spectral force behind the moniker, My Life as a Moth. In her latest single, Hyenas, the priestess of post-punk turns tempo into a sonic tease, poetry into a spiritual confession booth, and vocals into an alchemic elixir capable of instant intoxication. There’s no hangover when the track ends, only the compulsion to dig deeper into her darkly avant-garde discography.

Through syncopated beats and an atmospherically moody signature sound, she demonstrates how to deliver luxuriant release through shadowed, trip-hopped catharsis. Every beat lands like a ritual drum, and each breathy murmur swells into a beckoning, inviting listeners to succumb to the sacred thrill of discomfort. Hyenas strips back the ornamental and plunges straight into gothic machinations that chew up and spit out pastiche, replacing hollow gestures with visceral sensation.

The sharp wit and originality embedded in her artistic DNA have already secured attention from BBC Radio Wales, Absolute Radio, and Clout, but Hyenas is the track that will truly fixate those attuned to the pulse of alternative music’s darker undercurrent. Renowned for her striking vocal delivery and ability to disturb the comfortable while comforting the disturbed, My Life as a Moth continues to carve out her corner in the post-industrial ether, wielding lyrics like bones and ambience like incense smoke.

Hyenas is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Renon turned pop into a dark art with her trip-hop tinged triumph, ‘Priotities’

Posted on 1 November 2025

That intrinsically affecting mesmerism that locks you into the aura of Massive Attack and Portishead has been reincarnated within Renon’s seminal LP, ‘(WAY) TOO FAR’. The closing single, Priorities, alchemises pop into a dark art. With Trip-hop-heavy verses and sticky-sweet choruses, where the playful ingenuity of Renon shines through to a blinding degree, and a descent into glitched-out industrial-tinged alt-electronica to serve as the outro, there are few tracks that will give you more uninhibited talent to devour.

Anyone who grew up devouring the pop charts in the 00s will recognise a few Y2K elements thrown into the mix around her ethereally magnetic pop harmonies, but Renon dressed them up almost beyond recognition; they’re donning the guise of her soul as she explores all the ways we sacrifice ourselves by stretching too thin, often for the benefit of others. As a promise to herself, Priorities resounds with resonance.

As a trained jazz musician turned popstar, the Montreal-based artist has cultivated a sound soaked in gothic flair, camp theatrics, and synth-heavy arrangements stitched together with jazzy inflections and razor-sharp vocal control. After stealing attention on stages across London, Toronto, and Montreal, including two acclaimed Osheaga sets, she’s fully owning her rise with her concept LP that spirals from party-girl euphoria into bleak confession. Across her growing discography, there’s no mask, only mythmaking.

Priorities is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

NVIY Let Dream Pop Drift Beyond the Material in Her Ethereal Debut ‘Yours, eternally’

Posted on 23 September 2025

Not all artists are born to scintillate through their ethereal presence, but clearly, NVIY was alchemised from a different atmosphere than most. In her debut single, Yours, eternally, the 100% DIY dream pop artist allowed her diaphanously hypnotic vision to come to life, untainted by anyone else’s touch, resulting in a mind, body, soul and rhythmic pulse-melting synthesis of trip-hop-tinged electronica, 8-bit nuances, pop and RnB that transcends through both tone and distinction.

The single is about eternal love, about being with someone forever, even when they are bones and dust. Its romantic morbidity feels like a hymn for those who find beauty in impermanence. The shimmering seraphic bliss in the production might just declare that the fascination with the manic pixie dream girl archetype is over; it is time for the incorporeal dream pop icon to rise, and there is no artist more worthy of taking that crown after this debut.

By writing, producing, and performing everything herself, NVIY has started to build a sonic world that is entirely her own. The accompanying video, set in shallow water and flower fields, expands the narrative with a meditation on love, death, and renewal, and complements how the pre-chorus swells with organ tones and ghostly choirs, before the pitched vocal hook at the chorus turns devotion into something that feels almost ceremonial.

Yours, eternally is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Fahia Buche’s ‘The Greatest Deception’ Turns Betrayal into an Indie Folk Pop Lament Worth Listening To

Posted on 21 September 2025
Fahia Buche

Spanish-born singer-songwriter and pianist Fahia Buche has found the perfect crucible for her art-pop, folk, and soul fusion in The Greatest Deception, a stripped-back, lounge-laced vignette that pours vulnerability as smoothly as a glass of merlot. Written first as a private musing before she dared to revisit it years later, the track carries the weight of abandonment and betrayal, transforming disillusionment into a spectral work of quiet defiance.

The hushed, trip-hop-adjacent instrumentation creates space for her voice to land with diaphonous power as she traces the outline of friendships that splintered under the pressure of dishonesty, imparting fragments of shame. Each note seems to hold a flicker of that lonely place where she once stood, looking for a way back to herself. There’s something deeply human about how she allows those wounds to remain open, refusing to lacquer them with false optimism.

We would say that Buche is in a league of her own, but her commitment to exploring identity loss through emotional honesty made it clear that leagues are out of her periphery as a singer-songwriter; she’s more likely to place herself in the natural world, where she’ll find her muse and heal her wounds.

The Greatest Deception is now available on all major streaming platforms. Find your preferred way to listen via this link. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast