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I'M SO SORRYYYYY😭😭😭😭😭 falls to the ground screaming and crying and wailing hands over my head in despair and dies.

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Welcome to my website!

Here I will write reviews for whatever records and films I want to write about. This isn't intended to be a log of any kind; it's just so I can have a place for all my longer-form writing. For more complete & casual logs, check out my rateyourmusic or letterboxd.

My 5 favourite releases of 2025

Every record I've listened to in 2025

More reviews and writing and such coming whenever I write them.

Individual album/EP reviews.

Oklou	choke enough	★★★★★	24/12/2025
Ethel Cain	Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You	★★★★⯪ *note: as of 20/01/2026, this rating has been changed to ★★★★★	20/12/2025
Anna Von Hausswolff	ICONOCLASTS	★★★★☆	19/12/2025
Ethel Cain	Perverts	★★★★☆	18/12/2025
Lumnos	Na Santa Paz da Aurora	★★★★☆	18/12/2025

My personal five favourite releases of the year.

FIVE

Lumnos – Na Santa Paz da Aurora
released: 05/01/2025
runtime: 28:08

A dazzling exploration of the intersection of electronic music with blackgaze.
full review   |   listen on bandcamp

FOUR

Ethel Cain – Perverts
released: 08/01/2025
runtime: 89:20

An incredible dive into uncompromisingly uncomfortable drone music.
full review   |   unavailable on bandcamp

THREE

Anna von Hausswolff – ICONOCLASTS
released: 31/10/2025
runtime: 72:50

Epic and maximalist textural post-rock with a beautiful orchestral backing.
full review   |   listen on bandcamp

TWO

Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You
released: 31/10/2025
runtime: 73:35

The brilliant continuation of the Ethel Cain character acting as the sonic wedding of Hayden Anhedönia's two previous releases.
full review   |   unavailable on bandcamp

ONE

Oklou – choke enough
released: 07/02/2025
runtime: 35:44

A perfect debut album after over a decade of music released by Marylou Mayniel.
full review   |   listen on bandcamp

Na Santa Paz da Aurora
by Lumnos

released: 05/01/2025
runtime: 28:08
genresthe primary genres this record is tagged as on rateyourmusic as of writing (does not update): blackgaze, dream pop

review written: 18/12/2025
listenedthe number of times i've listened to this record as of writing (does not update): 11x

★★★★☆

Lumnos, a Brazilian two-man band, have been releasing music since 2015, and Na Santa Paz da Aurora is a celebration of a decade of the band’s existence. It’s the first record of theirs I listened to, and I think it’s a wonderful introduction to the band. The story of this EP is inspired by Amyr Klink, and the connection is clear. It’s incredibly easy to see how the blinding nature of all the snow in Antarctica and the acts themselves of adventuring and discovery inspired the melodies and timbre of sound present on this EP. (Unfortunately, I cannot comment on the lyrics of this release because I do not speak Brazilian Portuguese and I cannot find any lyrics online).

Lumnos describes themselves as “celestial black metal”, and, whilst being more about earthly adventures than cosmic ones, Na Santa Paz da Aurora really shows how the band leans into the blinding contrast of stars against the dark background of space. Sonically, this EP is a beautiful combination of blackgaze and electronic elements; the blackgaze serving to create a wonderful sense of atmosphere and the electronic elements cutting through to add a striking brightness to the release. They contrast brilliantly, and I think the title track shows this perfectly. The song starts with stunning electronic melodies, before letting the blackgaze and textures associated with it take centre stage, quieting down into a sort of interlude before a brilliant explosion of sound at the end, all whilst maintaining a very busy sound which makes it an exciting listen every time.

The whole EP is like this: there’s so much going on in every song that you can focus on something different every time. Effects like echo and reverb are utilised superbly; the lyrics, melody lines, guitar lines and use of percussion constantly weave through each other to create an extremely lush, uplifting sound. Overall, the main theme of this release is definitely the brightness coming from the melodies and textures, which is only furthered by the dazzling cover.

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Perverts
by Ethel Cain

released: 08/01/2025
runtime: 89:20
genresthe primary genres this record is tagged as on rateyourmusic as of writing (does not update): drone, dark ambient

review written: 18/12/2025
listenedthe number of times i've listened to this record as of writing (does not update): 10x

★★★★☆

January’s EP from Ethel Cain, a project made by Hayden Anhedönia, was certainly a stark departure from her earlier work. Whilst ‘August Underground’ off of her debut album Preacher’s Daughter was certainly drone-focused ambient, it served more as an interlude to the album, rather than being the main event. Perverts takes ‘August Underground’ to its extreme: endless noisy, dirty textures, distorted spoken word vocals, and an extremely uncomfortable atmosphere.

It’s a relentless listen. The lyrics of the EP deal with various perversions, often told from the perspective of the so-called pervert themselves. The only single, ‘Punish’, is one of the more sonically approachable songs off the album. Even so, it is far from a relaxing listen. There is a constantly-playing recording of a creaky swing set Anhedönia recorded on her phone. The song starts with just piano, the swing set, and Anhedönia’s haunting vocals, before distorted and reverberated guitars slowly come in, followed by staticky drones transforming the song into a disturbing soundscape. It has the strongest focus on lyrics of any track on the EP; they are closest to the front of the mix as they will ever be on this release, and the song puts a heavier emphasis on vocal melody and the distortion is basically absent. The content of the lyrics, are certainly not as easily digestible as the way they are sung: it tells the story of a pedophile who self-harms after committing child sexual abuse.

The rest of the release is similarly heavy. The drones are constant, distortion inevitable, and the lyrics, when present, are nothing less than obsessively eerie. Lyrics are constantly being repeated (the phrase “I love you” is said no less than 120 times on ‘Housofpsychoticwomn’, each time with so much distortion its difficult to even make out), adding to the obsession of the record. Its length, too, contributes to this; with a runtime of nearly 90 minutes spread across 9 songs, the experience of listening to this feels oppressive and never-ending, in a extremely well-crafted way. The second half of Onanist, I think, embodies this perfectly. Especially when performed live, the heaviness of this song is crushing and all-encompassing, leaving no room for anything other than awe and horror.

I love how unapologetically uncomfortable this release is. By not shying away from uncomfortable topics, the listener is forced to engage with the album sincerely. Anhedönia has clearly not made any compromises on this album (as she has mentioned having to do for both her albums), and letting the artistic vision be unhindered is what really pushes Perverts to the next level.

unavailable on bandcamp   |   view on rateyourmusic

ICONOCLASTS
by Anna von Hausswolff

released: 31/10/2025
runtime: 72:50
genresthe primary genres this record is tagged as on rateyourmusic as of writing (does not update): art rock, post-rock

review written: 19/12/2025
listenedthe number of times i've listened to this record as of writing (does not update): 5x

★★★★☆

Anna von Hausswolff released her sixth album ICONOCLASTS on Halloween, and it certainly sounds like it. It’s not creepy, but it definitely takes influences from darker aesthetics (von Hausswolff credits artists like Chelsea Wolfe as inspiration here). With woodwind, strings, church organ, and even saxophone across most of the tracks, ICONOCLASTS takes a lot of instrumental influence from orchestras, and it sounds just as epic as you would expect an art rock album made by an organist to sound. From the second it starts to the release’s end nearly 73 minutes later, you are absorbed into the world of the album. The first track is an instrumental, and sets the scene of the album amazingly in terms of what you should expect from the compositional style, melodic lines, use of instrumentation, and atmosphere. Von Hausswolff has a very recognisable voice, and her vocals are consistently powerful and dramatic as they sit above the rest of each composition.

Each song is perfectly crafted; the compositional work is consistently complex without being overwhelming, and the production and mixing only work to elevate this feeling, constantly drawing your ear to whichever of the many layers of each song von Hausswolff wants to bring to the foreground at that moment. Take the 11-minute epic ‘The Iconoclast’: a personal highlight of this song is the saxophone solo (played by Otis Sandsjö) around 9 minutes in. Melodically, it’s a brilliant solo, but what really elevates it is the fact that you can, by design, hear the keys of the saxophone being pressed underneath the melody, adding just another layer to the song in a very human manner. As the song ends, von Hausswolff sings “Can I protect you, Godly creation?”, her voice soaring over the rest of the mix in a truly beautiful culmination of the song.

Throughout all the album, von Hausswolff’s lyrics paint beautiful pictures about many different topics. ‘Aging Young Women’ deals with unsurety about starting a family, ‘Facing Atlas’ compares Atlas’s burden of holding up the sky with commitment and control over one’s life, and the record as a whole has many references to spirituality and especially iconoclasm, the practice of destroying religious icons that the record is named after. The record also features vocals from Iggy Pop and Ethel Cain. Both of their performances work very well; Cain’s vocals blend more into the atmosphere of the track while Pop’s vocals add a contrast which feels a little jarring at first, but with every listen I feel works better. Both artists also have duets with von Hausswolff, which are both really beautiful, and add yet more layers to this intense piece of music.

The percussion across the whole release is very notable. Von Hausswolff’s use of drums acts as an intense and relentless driving force, constantly pushing the music forwards and making it feel like each song is almost running away from you. I find this especially notable in ‘Struggle with the Beast’; combined with the repeating saxophone motif (which also appears on the opening track), this song has a manic and frenzied feel to it. This makes sense: the song was inspired by an episode of psychosis from a friend of von Hausswolff’s. She describes the “unstoppable … new weird brilliance” in the manner of her friend’s communication during this time, a description I feel definitely also applies to ICONOCLASTS.

ICONOCLASTS is an absolutely brilliant album. More sonically accessible than her earlier releases, it is a truly epic record in both length and complexity. The album is given all the space and time it needs to truly develop as you listen to it, and the same can be said for each individual song. Relentlessly and hypnotically moving forward, listening to this is a truly epic and cinematic experience that is absolutely worth the well over an hour long runtime.

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Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You
by Ethel Cain

released: 08/08/2025
runtime: 73:35
genresthe primary genres this record is tagged as on rateyourmusic as of writing (does not update): slowcore, singer-songwriter

review written: 20/12/2025
listenedthe number of times i've listened to this record as of writing (does not update): 16x

★★★★⯪

*note: as of 20/01/2026 and 22 listens, this rating has been changed to ★★★★★

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You is the long-awaited follow-up to Ethel Cain (Hayden Anhedönia)’s debut album Preacher’s Daughter. Set in 1986, Anhedönia’s character Ethel Cain is again the protagonist of this record, but this time we are given more of a backstory of Ethel’s teenage love, the titular Willoughby Tucker. A hazy and nostalgic slowcore record, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You sounds like the perfect blend between Anhedönia’s two previous works. Taking the more accessible (though still absolutely drenched in reverb) sound of Preacher’s Daughter, and adding much more ambient and drone influences that we’ve seen her use on Perverts. The songs range from the 80s synthpop-inspired ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ (Anhedönia said that she was pressured to have a ‘pop song’ on the album similar to ‘American Teenager’ off Preacher’s Daughter) to no less than three instrumental tracks; ‘Willoughby’s Theme’, ‘Willoughby’s Interlude’, and ‘Radio Towers’. Every song on this album is perfectly placed, and clearly has a purpose in adding to the story, be it more obviously through lyrics, or adding to the atmosphere and instead telling a story purely musically as the three instrumental tracks do.

‘Willoughby’s Theme’ is Anhedönia’s favourite track off the album. Sonically, it’s inspired by Angelo Badalamenti's ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ from Twin Peaks, and it tries to capture the dizzying experience of falling in love with someone, knowing it will forever change you. It sounds like the natural progression of ‘Televangelism’ off her previous album, with its reverb-heavy beautiful piano melody leading the song, but this time with much more ambience surrounding it, creating a hypnotic atmosphere that you can truly get lost in. The other instrumental tracks are similar: ‘Willoughby’s Interlude’ closes out the first half of the album, showing the progression of Willoughby and Ethel’s relationship after ‘Nettles’, while ‘Radio Towers’ takes a darker turn as a reworking of a scrapped song off Perverts, foreshadowing that Willoughby will soon leave Ethel, either by dying or due to some other reason.

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You dives deeper into Ethel’s insecurities. The opening track ‘Janie’ is about Ethel’s fear of losing her only friend Janie as she enters a relationship, and ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ is all about how Ethel compares herself to Holly Reddick, a promiscuous classmate who, to Ethel, is the embodiment of all she will never, and can never, be (“I’ll never be that kind of angel”). She expresses jealousy towards Holly as she assumes Willoughby loves her (because, to Ethel, Holly is the perfect girl while Ethel is deeply flawed), while also saying “I’ll never blame her for trying to make it”, as she empathises with Holly and recognises that even she has struggles. Similarly, ‘Nettles’ ends with the absolutely heartbreaking lyric “to love me is to suffer me”, sung quietly after the rest of the song has faded away as Ethel compares herself to nettles, stinging those around her.

‘Dust Bowl’ is halfway through the album, and I think does a wonderful job of showing the relationship between Ethel and Willoughby. It’s different from a lot of the other songs on the record which are much more about Ethel’s internal thoughts, as it paints a picture of Willoughby’s actual love for her as told by his actions: “His eyes all over me”, “You tried to wade in/’Cause you wanted just to tell me who you were.” Around halfway through the song, the instrumentation explodes as Anhedönia sings “Cooking our brains/Smoking that shit your daddy smoke in Vietnam”. It’s a really powerful moment, and Anhedönia’s live version only elevates this. She performs the song with the stage in hazy red dim lighting, as she is backlit by a strong white strobe light, so all we can see is her silhouette as she stands behind a cross. We are effectively Willoughby here, and Anhedönia is Ethel, as she sings “but all you could see was me”.

The line “I’ve been picking names out for our children/You’ve been wondering how you’re gonna feed them” from the 15-minute closer ‘Waco, Texas’ shows the very gendered divide of Ethel’s life. It is Willoughby’s job to financially provide for the family they imagine they will have together, and Ethel’s destiny to be a housewife and in turn, provide for him. She expresses anger at this in ‘Nettles’, singing “I wanna bleed, I wanna hurt the way that boys do” as she longs to be allowed to be angry in a way forbidden for women, especially for Ethel as the daughter of a preacher. This song ultimately shows the destruction of the two characters relationship, as Willoughby leaves her due to his own struggles, which are explored more in the second half of the album as their relationship develops. Not only is their relationship destroyed, but so are Ethel’s perhaps naïve ideas of what love means and her whole outlook on life, as Willoughby meant to the world to her (and clearly still does at the time of her death in Preacher’s Daughter).

I think the key lyric of this album is “this was all for you” from ‘Nettles’. It’s a true example of how Ethel thinks and how she tells us of the way she interacts with the world at the time of this album. It would be a mistake to consider her a reliable narrator – everything about her fundamentally comes back to her adoration of Willoughby, though it often clouds her judgement. Anhedönia describes the record as “one long love song”, which I think is both a description of Ethel’s feelings towards Willoughby, but also in the way that Anhedönia was inspired by instrumental, drone, and ambient music when making this record. Each song cannot be considered just by itself. Lyrically and sonically, every song is contextualised by every other song on the album, creating an amazingly cohesive record. The same can be said with the way it interacts with Preacher’s Daughter: understanding Ethel’s backstory further contextualises her later in life, and knowing how Ethel’s life ends in Preacher’s Daughter only serves to make listening to Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You an even more heartbreaking experience, as we know that not only is their relationship doomed from the beginning, but so is Ethel’s whole life. This is what makes Anhedönia such a brilliant songwriter; so intentionally telling stories to perfectly craft the story that she wants to tell. This is a true masterclass in what a concept album should be.

unavailable on bandcamp   |   view on rateyourmusic

choke enough
by Oklou

released: 07/02/2025
runtime: 35:44
genresthe primary genres this record is tagged as on rateyourmusic as of writing (does not update): alt-pop, electronic

review written: 24/12/2025
listenedthe number of times i've listened to this record as of writing (does not update): 41x

★★★★★

Marylou Mayniel, a classically-trained French electronic artist, has been releasing music consistently since 2013. This year, in February, she finally released her debut album under the name Oklou. To me, choke enough is a perfect showcase of Mayniel’s music. It’s clearly hers – Mayniel has a very particular brand of minimalist electronic music which has been developing over the years – but this album leans away from the more ambient vibe of a lot of her earlier releases. Choke enough is more trance-inspired; songs are generally more complex and have more of a focus on developing melodic ideas, but that minimalist feel so central to her music is definitely still present.

Take ‘ict’. When I first listened to this album, this was the song that immediately drew me in. The song starts out with a quiet, rhythmic synth note, before Lillian Mille plays a beautifully nostalgic melody line on the trumpet. Mayniel’s vocals don’t start until nearly halfway through the track, where she sings only a few repeated lyrics with a lot of echo and reverb. Slowly, the intensity of the song builds up until Mayniel is singing 2 verses on repeat over a dense and beautiful arrangement of synths, backing vocals, and percussion almost reminiscent of the amen break in its complexity. Finally, the song draws back to its minimal sound it had at the beginning, bringing the song full circle in a wonderful way. The imagery of this song is intentionally very childish and nostalgic: it’s intended to bring to mind a child running after an ice cream truck (hence the song name), seeking the joy and answers that getting that ice cream will bring.

Mayniel’s vocals all across the album are really beautiful. They work perfectly with the instrumentation; they’re soft, melodic, and extremely pleasant to listen to. Her lyrics, too, really add to the album as they are constantly creating abstract images. Talking to Pitchfork, Mayniel talked about how this was very purposeful while writing lyrics for choke enough with Casey MQ, especially with the slightly-nonsensical lyrics in ‘ict’. Mayniel is French, yet all her music is very much in English. She has talked about how even though it can be difficult to write lyrics in a second language with a restricted vocabulary, writing in English is the only way she can write. Writing in English allows her to explore more with language and “just have fun”, as she feels she associates too much meaning to words in her native tongue which restricts her, a common trend seen with exophonic writers. The fact that choke enough is written in Mayniel’s second language allows the album’s lyrics to explore a more abstract feel whilst still being purposeful in the words chosen, creating uniquely honest lyricisms.

The stand out song on the record is ‘harvest sky’, which features underscores (April Harper Grey). It’s more energetic than most of the other songs on the album, taking sonic inspiration from Grey’s own music style. Grey’s and Mayniel’s styles combine into a busy, atmospheric, trance song which would be my song of the year if I were to make a list of that sort of thing. The synths are bright and fuzzy, and the melody extremely catching. The vocals in the chorus mirror the synth line underneath it, cementing the melody even further in your mind. Grey’s verse, too, really adds to the song, and the album, providing a more energetic voice to contrast Mayniel’s softer vocals on the song. She’s not the only feature on the album to provide this contrast: Bladee is also featured, on ‘take me by the hand’ earlier in the record.

The use of synthesizers all across choke enough is fabulous. In every song, the layers of synths work together to create an ethereal atmosphere very reminiscent of the album cover. There’s clearly a lot of focus on atmosphere throughout the record, and the reverberated synths do a lot of work towards this. Whilst most of the songs don’t actually use arpeggiators (as confirmed by Mayniel via Instagram story), you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise; the melodies are short, repetitive, and glide up and down the keyboard in nearly every track in a way which Mayniel has always been a fan of doing, and has truly mastered on this album. The synths take centre stage, literally, at a live performance. In concert, every song sounds a little different from its studio version as Casey MQ mixes the songs live, electrifying the room with more bass-heavy energetic versions that develop the ideas of the original tracks even further.

The album ends on a (slightly) more acoustic note. In concert, she performs the last two songs of the album, ‘want to wanna come back’ and ‘blade bird’ backed with nothing but an acoustic guitar as an encore. These songs work really well to close off the album (and the live show), bringing the energy down without making the songs boring. The whole album is extremely cohesive, and truly gets better with every listen. While at first it may not immediately jump out as something really special, choke enough will creep up on you, and before you know it work its way to the top of your albums of the year list as your 4th most listened to album of all time. Or maybe that’s just me.

listen on bandcamp   |   view on rateyourmusic