MARY OCHER — THE NARRATIVE (FIRST MOVEMENT)

How so much power exists in one minute and thirty-seven seconds of music! 'The Narrative (First Movement)' by Berlin composer and musician Mary Ocher exists in a state of defiance, atonal chords and stuttering staccato rhythms battling against a tide of silence, with such force exerted on the keys in some places that my own fingertips started aching.

An essentially minimalist piece, we move quickly from a conventional arpeggio into a frenzy of figuration, a simple melody exploded into frenetic collages of rapid-fire playing, notes cut up in a succession of glitching fractions of themselves, shifting between soft moments of surrender and violent fury — occasionally the left hand erupts in storms of thundering bass notes leaving a thick smoke of sustain in their wake.

We have a narrative, as intimated by the title of the piece. But in trying to spell out that narrative, in telling her story, Ocher jettisons the regulated ascending notes in triple time like a deadweight and takes the wheel, cutting through the void in sturdy acrobatics, siphoning her craft not to tell us listeners but rather show us the de-profundis-clamavi depths.

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• 🔔 Mary Ocher's 'The Narrative (First Movement)' has also been visualised by artist Boris Eldagsen in video form. Using generative AI, the video depicts a psychically pained man merging with, and being destroyed by, a derelict piano that folds in on itself, falls apart and deposits ephemera among other things, kind of like a dream in which one's teeth fall out, in a series of monochrome vignettes. You can watch the video here.
• 🔔 This piece of music is taken from her upcoming album Weimar which is will be released on 13th March 2026. You may, if you choose, pre-order the vinyl or digital form of the album on Bandcamp.

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☟ Mary Ocher Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ tiktok ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ wikipedia

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GRALITSA — MORNING BUSTLE IN THE HOUSE OF INTELLIGENT PEOPLE

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What a wonderful noise this is. It’s a frenetic collection of objects thrown together, a series of chaotic collisions, unidentifiable percussion and cartoonish sound effects, that gives Gralitsa’s track its spark. Titled ‘Morning Bustle In The House Of Intelligent People’ (as if that wasn’t enough), this truly is the horror of waking to last night’s detritus, the morning routines, pouring cereal into bowls.

Like a sort of Dadaist folk song, it’s a soundtrack of all the switches and buttons we press, the doors and compartments we open and close, all little noises we make on our way to working our way out of the door, and how we deal with that. A semblance of calm composure wavers behind in the form of wobbling synths, and finally the day begins: chords reverberate out of earshot, resonating onto the street.

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• 🔔 Gralitsa’s ‘Morning Bustle In The House Of Intelligent People’ is taken from their album Little Mosquitos Are Sleeping This Night. Stream and purchase it on Bandcamp.

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☟ Gralitsa Internet Presence ☟
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STH — FINISH CROSSING

⌾ LISTEN TO STH, FINISH CROSSING ⌾

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It's on a backdrop of skittering Geiger ambience, the fuzz and dust of the years made sound and launched burrowing into the air, swarms of Big Bang television static, that Russian producer sth (short for "synthetic sequencing") overlays an otherwise calm, relaxing atmosphere.

There is a panicked feel in 'Finish Crossing' — noticeable in the bio-mechanical micropercussion shredding the air like paper rain, and the gurgling güiro-esque calling out like unknown nocturnal insects, the arrhythmic deep bass thuds — but there is laid-back lounge cool that exists here, too.

Electric piano chords spread muted gleaming softness into the proceedings, with later melodies inching in from far-off corners, and the clonk and woozy resonance of a vibraphone providing horizontal jazz. sth summons wordless vocals from the noise, adds a few drops of elastic synth and punches in dynamic punctuation (an abrupt one second of quiet at 3:16) to complete this comprehensive study in atmospheric sample-made music.

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• 🔔 'Finish Crossing' is one of the tracks taken from sth's album 35mm, the musicmaker's latest release for Russian label Radiant Sound. Recorded between 2018 and 2020, it's dedicated to analogue people living in the digital world. You can download it or stream 35mm on the label's Bandcamp if you like.

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☟ sth Internet Presence ☟
⚘ soundcloud ⚘

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🐣 ХЬЁРДИС — РАЗРУШЕНИЕ

The satisfying snowbreeze from the underworld, this calming wave of white noise that is so abrasive and scratching at your ear canal and like the ghost of a chainsaw somersaulting through the sky, a downpour from tungsten grey clouds soaked in distortion. That is the crux of this track by Russo-Ukrainian duo Dmitry Gruber and Marianna Diakova aka Хьёрдис (Hjördis), the shoegaze wall of crushed wavelengths that rifles through the track at all times. Called 'Разрушение' (meaning destruction or demolition) it's a song whose lyrics, sung in contrasting plaintiveness by Diakova, read simply in translation: "I want to destroy / Everything I see / Everything I feel / Is nothing."

Speaking to yes/no via email, Gruber told us that the track is "mostly about feeling, when you're calm, dreamy but very destructive at the same time." And at the heart of this song is that explosive gale of a guitar sound that feels as though it could strip cement from the metal bones of a building, and propelling it there is this driving energetic beat with popping kicks and snares, yet there is this golden guitar chord all liquid and chorused and with this brilliant rippling sheen to it, and there are these sunny vocals, innocent and fresh like clear sky after rain. It is exactly that balance: dreamy but destructive. "Some kind of ambivalence," Gruber clarifies. And you feel it, this infectious nothingness, how it would be to crush a derelict building with one thumb vs. imagine flying without a care. Similar feelings.

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• 🔔 You may purchase 'Разрушение' from Bandcamp.
• 🔔 Dmitry Gruber, the Russian half of the duo, also uses the band's name as a netlabel.

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☟ Хьёрдис Internet Presence ☟
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🌭 INCHANGE — NIGHT SHIFT

The repeating melody at the heart of the track effuses as much down-to-earth somewhat melancholy reality as it does a sense of something secret and unreal, mysterious, discoverable yet undiscoverable at the same time. It plays like a harp, heavenly, warping with effects and glistening into the neardistance, a gentle dreamy arpeggio that oscillates, aloof and empty, pure and puzzling; light and breezy yet dark and looming. Russian musicmaker Inchange offers up a sacred grove of sound, an idyll that is real and organic as dappled light through shimmering leaves, as constructed and awesome as ruined columns and archways: wayward-sounding but refined, cultured.

There is a hint of VGM sound in 'Night Shift', in the exquisite expansive exploratory ambience of the track, in the trickling shuffle of the beat and its call-to-action feel, the fresh pluckings of that refrain, the what's-over-there intrigue of the small pings of delayed guitar that ebb and overlap—it's almost very nearly like a piece of music that could have been included in Zelda: Breath of the Wild (or maybe it's closer to Ocarina of Time's title theme), what with all its scene-setting music that draws up an atmosphere with unobtrusive non-earworming melodies, relaxing with hints of restlessness. The coursing lullaby is founded on glowing columns of sub-bass gloop that charge and pulse beneath everything, adding more fluidity to the track, rising and falling, more subtly dynamic nuances for this multifaceted morsel.

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• 🔔 'Night Shift' is taken from Inchange's recently released Through Noise EP—peep it and download over on Bandcamp.

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☟ Inchange Internet Presence ☟
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MUHROCHKA – TEARS THAT LED TO OUR END

'Tears that led to our end'. It's a very sad title, a six-word micro-story that tells you everything you need to know: there was sadness – hence the tears – and there was an ending of what we can assume was a relationship. Instantly there's a snapshot of long talks, grey skies, the dullness of the world from the perspective of the speaker, the impending doom of it all, the hours stretched out ahead in unending fathoms of solitude.

Very melodramatic, I know I know, but that's how it feels – and that's just going from the title of this track by Muhrochka. It's difficult to get much information about this guy, but we can abduce that he's from Russia somewhere, thanks to a link (albeit not working) to a profile on VK, which is basically Russia's Facebook. 'Tears that led to our end' is eight months old but it's of no consequence: the track sounds how it sounds regardless of time.

So what does it actually sound like? It's chiptuney, that's for sure – "fakebit" as it's been tagged. To a flailing set of hi-hats, marshy snares and pulsing kicks, a muffled tide of droning, damaged synth sounds judders in a fuzzy whirlwind: an immediate landscape of hardy metallic greyscale, dark teal waves cresting and crashing in a storm of static. Decaying clusters of bleeps play fluid notes over the top, alternating with sparse and plaintive booping sounds soaring in the bright murk of it all, like a brave face in the wake of anguish.

Melancholy, gloomy, introspective – these words would all fit Muhrochka's song, but there's something other than that, something vital about the track, something alive and beating at its core. Though it spins a sad orbit in your mind, this song is by no means downbeat – as much as it charts an unchangeable series of events, it also serves as a record of courageous acceptance, an illustration of hope.

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☟ Muhrochka Social Media Presence ☟
YouTube • Last.fm Bandcamp

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AVAY MIRACLE

Just open your eyes and click more things than usual and embrace curiosity and be inquisitive and you'll soon find yourself discovering some pretty cool music. That's literally all there is to it. As such, I've been clickin around like a madman in the last couple of days, sometimes until I realise I'm very deep into the unholy early hours of the morning. So it happens. In any case, the fruits of this labour produces some really nice new sounds to listen to.

This track is obviously one of them. It's the kind of thing that you can be instantly drawn to just from the first few seconds of listening. It is called 'Miracle' and comes from a Russian producer who usually goes by the name MAD-B but has eschewed this moniker for the less-in-your-face AVAY; he accompanied the track with a note: Meet my new project named "AVAY". And what a happy meeting it was. Therefore, I would also like to introduce to you the deeply delicious sounds of this soulful number.

Being relatively minimalistic perhaps makes this an even more captivating experience. Softly caressed electric piano sounds sit atop driving tunnels of bass punctuated with heart-stopping kicks. Ornamental synth bleeps drop like glistening icicles into the deep of the track. After a mid-section sampling some Russian dialogue, the beat comes in with renewed gusto, adding dragging-wind-up hi-hats into the equation and occasional cymbal crashes. Its finish is stark and lonely, leaving you with the kick and ambient fizzes after what was an emotive, even moving, song.

The star of the show here, besides the beautiful production, is the singing. It's a sample, a slowed-down, low-register version of the vocals in The Temper Trap's song, also called 'Miracle'. What's clear is that it is gloriously layered and pockmarked with lilts of romance scintillating like some religious revelation of love, the words "And I may not always believe / But you're nothing short of a miracle" taking a new significance in the hear-thumping slo-house electronica of AVAY's rendition of the track. Watch out for this guy: he could be on to a winner.

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ALEPH FOURTH WAY EP

Here's a damn nice treat today. Future sounds. Not really like anything I can think of off the top of my head. That's always the sign of an interesting song. When something doesn't really sound like much else, there's a vibe to it that's wholly new, and that leads your mind to go off into new, unexplored clouds of thought, nearly indescribable and unquenchable quiet raptures of feeling or imagination. Too deep? Too much? Well, whatever.

In some ways, it's an assault on the ears, but in other ways it's such a glorious mix of sounds that my ears don't mind. Or maybe I should just turn it down. This is the Fourth Way EP and it comes from young (19!) producer Ivan Erofeev, born in a remote Siberian village and now living in kind-of-no-less-remote Omsk, south-west Siberia. Released on the ever-cool King Deluxe, the Canadian label that brought us Jacob 2-2 and Metome, the EP is a quartet of heterogeneous songs that command your complete undivided attention. The EP is named after P.D. Ouspensky's interpretation of one of esoteric teacher George Gurdjieff's theories, the "Fourth Way" - Ouspensky put it as follows:

There are three recognized ways of self-development generally known in esoteric circles. These are the Way of the Fakir, dealing exclusively with the physical body, the Way of the Monk, dealing with the emotions, and the Way of the Yogi, dealing with the mind... there is a Fourth Way which does not demand its followers to abandon the world. The work of self-development takes place right in the midst of ordinary life. (says Wikipedia)

And maybe that's what Aleph's EP is getting at - experiencing life by actually experiencing it, simply being in amongst it all. Maybe, anyway. In any case, it starts with a killer of a song, 'Overheat' - aggressive, dark, brimming with unrelenting bass and buzzsaw-like distorted synth, pushing a brooding, ballsy breakbeat-style rhythm into your eardrums. Just the kind of song that I would literally be overheating to on a claustrophobic and sweaty dancefloor. Chopped-up samples glitch-out in the middle, a police siren screeching from somewhere. Sheer energy.

But next is the actually-quite-esoteric-sounding-itself title track, 'Fourth Way'. It is a rich weave of sounds, a veritable tangle of percussion that snaps to a rhythmic dubstep beat, a thick and heavy atmosphere illustrated by waves of synth punctuated by a procession of 8-bit bleeps. There's a really cool video to this track, created by Namibian animator Gero Doll - it's basically psychedelic 3D-rendered madness. You can watch that below.

Next is the subverted party tune, 'Crown of Slave', whose summery synth chords and slow house beat soon turn dark and stormy: trap-esque vocal samples slot in amongst menacing sub-bass, the percussion gets crazy with rolling toms and screeching synth. Yet it's back to its calculated stabs of symbiotic melodic synth chords and bass till the end of the song. Which kind of brings us perfectly onto the goofball sounds of twisted after-party gurner, 'Vodka on Patio'. Kooky popping percussion joins with weird my-head-is-spinning piercing whirls of synth. A funky little melody joins in alongside an equally funky bassline. The beat falls over and into itself, clashing and skipping the whole way. It takes a bizarre twist when around halfway through it breaks out into a smart bossa nova rhythm, and the image of having vodka on the patio transforms into a mockery of some classy cocktail bar. A clippy, still-bustling beat - with so many bouncy percussive sounds - and a Mediterranean, maybe like French or something, acoustic guitar melody gives a coolly .

An incredible work in sampling, dynamism, the difference between light & dark, and the construction of beats, Fourth Way is a lovely slice of sounds from Aleph, a promising producer and one who hopefully will thrive after this release from King Deluxe. I'm so glad I was sent this to listen to. I'll be watching for new stuff, and maybe you will too.

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Listen to Aleph on Soundcloud
Hear more Aleph on Myspace
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Check Aleph's page on King Deluxe

NEEVA EVEN IF... EP

Hello. Today I had my first ever red "Forelle" pear. It was very sweet but not as juicy as regular pears. Perhaps it wasn't ripe enough. In any case, it was tasty.

Now that we have that out of the way, I'd like to introduce this very nice Italian producer called Neeva. With the IRL (In Real Life - of course, how could you not know that? but don't fret if you didn't, there's a first time for everything) name of Federico Orrù, he makes really nice electronic music. On his most recent release, the Even If... EP, he has collaborated with quite a few people both in terms of "featuring" artists and remix artists - it's nice to see because often you think of electronic musicians as quite solitary people.

I mean, they make music "on their own" don't they? So it's just heartwarming, in a weird way perhaps, to know that they are building strong communities. Neeva himself is quite active in his local community, collaborating with artists at galleries, for instance. Often this kind of thing has to do with "label-mates", as I've heard them called; in this case it would have been Russian label Ritmo Sportivo, but I don't know if any of those featuring are actually on/have anything to do with the label. Possibly/probably/most likely not (except Cream Child). Which makes my point kinda moot. Whatever. I could be wrong though. Nice to see collaborations, is what I mean.

And it can quite clearly influence the resulting sound of a song. For starters we have 'One Day' featuring Tokyo duo N-Qia. I wrote about this for Dummy magazine because I think it was my favourite from the EP. It's the most melodic track on the EP, with ghostly vocals from Nozomi and a frantic pots-and-pans beat, pulsing with orchestral synth. The remix of this one by Sun Glitters keeps the general sound but adds saw-wave bass and extra cloudy synth, turning it into a hazy dream of the original.

The rest of the collaborators keep things decidedly dark. Italian producer Grovekingsley provides a spooky-yet-urban spin on 'What', a nocturnal hip-hop beat underpinning solemn, murkily reverberating synths. Likewise, Mario Mereu helps provide the dark atmosphere on 'Tail' - an unearthly synth rises and falls in conjunction with low-end vocal samples. But around 1:30 in this track, something positive, a ray of warm, pulsating sunshine rains upon the gloom, joined by scraping glitched-out electric synths. But this darkness can be quite energetic, shown in Russian producer Cream Child's remix of 'What'. It's a towering, house-beat-led foray into the dark, industrial side of dark music. Like looking into the edge of a dark forest without actually getting lost in it. Bleeps twist and turn in the bleak water-moving-around-in-old-pipes sound. Pretty intense.

The only song that Neeva "does" by himself, 'Waiting For', is an ambient, bass-ear-massage that washes over you in tones of pretty chilled-out stuff. Gradually leads to a more distorted sound, more beset with percussion. Sounds like a deserted beach in winter. Scintillating synths rain down, clopping percussion zooms in at the end - a party is beginning - is that what we were waiting for? Who knows. It's nice anyway.

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Like Neeva on Facebook
Listen to Neeva on Soundcloud

Listen to Grovekingsley on Soundcloud
Listen to N-Qia on Soundcloud
Listen to Sun Glitters on Soundcloud
Listen to Cream Child on Soundcloud