It's about time tbh.
Over the last few years I've become really good friends with a startlingly brilliant bunch of musicians, all in their early 20s. We initially bonded over Cardiacs, but our common interests are considerably broader than that alone. However, as great as music as they are, they are terrible at shameless self-promotion. Given how they're all making music that I'd consider envelope-pushing, you'd think there should be some sort of mechanism to transport their sounds to the ears of anyone with an interest in avant-prog, psych-nightmarecore, zeuhl, RIO and so forth. But there isn't, and given their place within established genre conventions or movements being unclear at best, there's been a strange reluctance to give them a chance. So I'm starting this thread. You know me! You know all the upsetting ljcore that makes it into the EOY playlists. Well, this is the most ljcore. So, if you're intrigued...
I want to focus, initially, on three of them. Firstly, cori&her, the project of one Florence Ambrose, who just turned 20 having released this album two days beforehand. It's a cosmic RIO/hyperpop/avant-splurge meltdown with a novel's worth of painstakingly (and densely) plotted lyrics, and almost constant layers of MIDI duelling with 'real' instrumentation, including guitars by her girlfriend Clover Lanahan (more of her later). It's one of the greatest things I've ever heard - at least to my tastes - and I urge anyone with any curiosity to give it a try. The song '8' would be my OPO, ftr.
https://coriandher.bandcamp.com/album/no-arms-for-plasticine-gods
Another friend I want to boost is Logan Palmer-Harris aka Logan Posthumous. Their stuff is extremely bizarre, counter-intuitive wrong-pop where hints of dungeon synth and bizarre tone clusters find their way into Wyrd England gothicism. It's very unlike anything else I've ever heard. Here's the latest album; I'd start at the beginning:
https://lllogan.bandcamp.com/album/would-you-could-you-on-a-train
And then we have Clover herself. The more hardened prog composer of the gang, this Berklee dropout turned harmony witch has already turned out one fiendishly pretty concept album - https://april1830.bandcamp.com/album/the-adventures-of-space-pig - has released a really great follow-up EP which won't be hard to find if you like, and is soon to release an 'even better album'. Her collaborations with Florence have also gotten off to a highly promising start, with their looser, more improvisational Fucktoids project being possibly the most RIO-adjacent of all these. Here!
https://fucktoids.bandcamp.com/album/fucktoids
This little band have also made a bunch of music videos, of which I am only in one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnttq0rSxPc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8blpIpf6AAs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSwvNxwxSE4
That'll do for now. There are other projects and other individuals who will probably get a mention in the fullness of time. If this thread gains enough momentum I'll even talk about my own recent album/video...although I can't profess quite the intricacy or instrumental abilities of the others!
― imago, Sunday, 20 July 2025 13:42 (two weeks ago)