While it’s been a while since the last Weirdo Rippers column, it’s been with good reason.
Since the turn of the year, there have been countless submissions – most of which we have wrapped our ears around. However, given the lack of resources and our unbending principles with regards to our weekly scheduling, there just isn’t enough hours in the day to get to every single piece of music that is received.
In saying that, everything we can get to listen to is always considered. The artists that adorn these pages, vital parts to the overall picture of this site, and while this latest edition has led to deeper deliberations than usual, the extra time taken has arguably resulted in the most diverse Weirdo Rippers yet.
The artists featured in this edition, hailing from all across the world. A melting pot of ideas and influences from a wide variety of cultures, which is exactly what this feature is about. Beyond the borders in every sense, and if you’re hard-pressed to find something in the following list of new releases, then you’re a hard soul to please.
One of the featured artists is Seattle-based act, melondruie, who last month released their excellent LP, Invisible via Tyneside-based label, Cruel Nature Records. Exclusive to Sun 13, you can watch the above video for the featured track, Retreating Into Myself.
Elsewhere, it’s been a busy first quartet of 2025, with a host of excellent experimental releases already featured on the site, including the latest from Lawrence English, Deep Fade, as well as the debut collaboration between Michael Grigoni and Pan-American’s Mark Nelson, New World Lonely Ride (read our interview here).
As April draws to a close, there’s plenty more to come in weeks and months ahead, but for now, it’s time to see what’s been lighting up left field…
Catapult Elpam: Boredom and Other Evil Spirits
Cruel Nature Records
Want something that really courses through the veins like lightning? Look no further than Catapult Elpam, who on his latest cut, Boredom and Other Evil Spirits, reaches for the earth’s ends, and finds them empathically.
The project of Romanian born Stefan Alcaza, Catapult Elpam is all about the possibilities, and smashing hip-hop together with mangled samples, a rainbow coalition emerges through the seam of psychedelia. There’s an underlying darkness to these tracks but it’s overridden by soft colours that become more prominent the deeper you explore.
Inspired by Soren Kierkegaard’s view of boredom being the root of all evil, Boredom and Other Evil Spirits is anything but. It’s a confident nod to early hip-hop whilst also taking sound manipulation to new places.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Anla Courtis ja Lehtisalo: 1972
Ektro Records
The artwork to Anla Courtis and Jussi Lehtisalo’s 1972 tells a story of the grided psychosis the duo orchestrates here.
Courtis, the veteran, mind-bending Argentinian experimentalist, and Jussi Lehtisalo – the Finnish mastermind behind Circle, Pharaoh Overlord and many other collaborations (the height alongside Aidan Baker), together with 1972 the duo carve out a gooey psychedelic odyssey likened to a soundtrack from an upside down world.
Immersed in microtonal drones and open-sourced gadget wrangling, the duo covers everything from metallic drone to fractured folk and deep listening. Of course, the term experimentation is open ended, but on 1972 it feels like Courtis and Lehtisalo produce something that could be considered the embodiment of it.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Dever to Laye: Init
Autoscopy Records
French composer, Adrien Brunel, returns under the Dever to Laye moniker for his latest release, Init.
Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, Init sees Brunel occupying a similar sound world to New York-based composer, with four analog synth-based pieces that surge deep into corners. The atmosphere, swelling and swirling with a greyscale noise that makes the walls sweat.
Init is emotive composition, and whilst billed as ‘sad’, genuine sadness needs to coexist with other emotions for it to be truly validated. In this case, there’s an uncurrent of anger to these pieces, which gives Init a deeper sense of reality. It’s a mind unravelling through sound, and as Dever to Laye, Brunel produces something worth anyone’s time.
Distraxi: The Colour of the Sky
Brachliegen Tape
Distraxi is the brainchild of U.K. noisenik, Alina Church, and on her latest cut, The Colour of the Sky, she returns to underground constants, Brachliegen Tape.
You want noise? The Colour of the Sky is your trip. This is plundering sonics fit to put the scares into your worst nightmares. Think Lustmord and Birchville Cat Motel scrapping it out after one too many pints after a night lamenting in a graveyard.
The graveyard may be apt here, too, for there is a devotional sense to Distraxi’s recordings. A spiritual plane where higher powers demand something. That something? Well, it’s down to one’s interpretation, but sonically at least, The Colour of the Sky is something akin to being passed through an angle grinder.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Felines of the Night: Catmandu
Dead Forest Records
This feature was tailored for projects like Felines of the Night. The project of Isle of Lewis’s Ali Murray, who on her debut release, Catmandu, provides seven dark folk laments sung by, you guessed it, cats…
While folk music is for the people, the people have become stale. Narcissistic and generally not that fun to be around. The only decent thing to do? Re-imagine the genre by handing it down to a section of the animal kingdom.
That’s what Felines of the Night is all about. A lament of these times through the lens of our furry friends. Catmandu, escapism with a new twist. An escapism from ourselves. And who better provide it than the most precious creature of all?
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Fiorella16: Postales del paraíso
Self-released
Last month, Peruvian experimentalist, José María Málaga Chuquitaype, hit the resume button on the Fiorella16 project with Postales del paraíso.
Still coming down from his excellent 2024 release as a part of the noise-rock duo, LA TERMINAL, Chuquitaype dials it down on Postales del paraíso with a series of compositions more designed for your dreams than your nightmares.
Using a mélange of effects that are informed by the more atmospheric corners of the experimental landscape, Fiorella16 creates more of a background-y companion on Postales del paraíso as opposed to something to gnaw at your ears. There’s plenty of the latter in the Fiorella16 canon, but this is a nice addition for the more reflective moments in life.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Gnäw: II
Ramble Records / Stoned to Death / Radio Khiyaban / Centripetal Force
Having first met in Milan, Italy and now based in Prague, Czechia, Gnäw, the duo consisting of multi-instrumentalists Arash Ghasemi and Simo Hakalisto, return with their second full-length release, II.
II is an accomplished feat. Notwithstanding one track featuring drummer, Michal Mitro (Derakhshesh, Su Su, Koor Su), the duo conjures up something that sounds like a hypnotic folk drone ensemble melting minds in dust bowl auditoriums. Their sound, wholesome with every note placed for a reason.
Drawing influences from their native Finland and Iran, respectively, on II, Ghasemi and Hakalisto creative something that skirts on the fringes of meditative but with a fierce edge to it. An excellent continuation from their 2021 debut, I.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
T. Gowdy: Trill Scan
Constellation Records
Montreal producer, T. Gowdy, returns with his first full-length release since 2022’s criminally underrated Miracles.
While Miracles was something that flirted with the dance floor and giant sound systems, Trill Scan is more of a heady cross-pollination of analogue electro acoustic workouts and greyscale techno. Said to be a union between choral and medieval music, the results bend the mind to places that Gowdy’s label mate, Joni Void, has also explored (more on that in a bit).
Something that wouldn’t look out of place on the shelf of, say, the members of Demdike Stare, Trill Scan is the latest document from an artist who always strives to break boundaries. Trill Scan, something that doesn’t sound like anything else out there, and while that may be hard to digest for the pigeon-hole merchants, Gowdy’s latest sound collage reveals something new every time.
David Grubbs: Whistle from Above
Drag City
The beautiful collage art that adorns David Grubbs’ Whistle from Above tells you a lot about his latest ascent. In many ways, it’s a ‘Best of’ David Grubbs. Like the cover itself, the experimental guitarist covers every inch of his sound world whilst adding new components within it.
Following his excellent collaboration along Loren Connors (2024’s Evening Air), Grubbs carves out more majesty throughout the eight compositions which make up Whistle from Above. A series deep sketches that explore blues and jazz in what is a delicate hybridisation of deep-listening and post-rock, resulting in a panoramic view of the avant-garde.
So rich and rounded, Whistle from Above isn’t the worst place to start in the David Grubbs canon, which makes it even more baffling as to why more people aren’t shouting about it.
Hekla: Turnar
Phantom Limb
Following the release of her 2022 LP, Xiuxiuejar, Icelandic theremin musician, Hekla Magnúsdóttir (a.k.a. Hekla), returns with her latest offering, Turnar.
On Turnar, Hekla has orchestrated darker tones than ever before. The overriding sounds of cello, church organ and wordless vocalisations, forming a greyscale canvass likened to a scene from Dune. The drones alone, thrumming with an intensity that threatens burst at the seams.
It’s fizzy breezeblock composition pulled from the darkest parts of the soul, and not unlike the gruelling noisescapes of fellow experimentalist Deep Fade, these soundscapes are inspired by the ruinous underworld. And on the back of Turnar, Hekla proves that she is the overlord of it.
Hell on Hearth: One Hundred and Forty Two
Self-released
Another year, another wave of Hell on Hearth, this time led by Sean Wárs’ fourth release of 2025, One Hundred and Forty Two.
Think of the abrasive noise of some industrial machine slowed down and manipulated to the kind of end-world sonics that can only be found at the bottom of the vortex. It’s ultimately what the Hell on Hearth experience is: a voyage into such milieus, and on One Hundred and Forty Two Wárs may have travelled to the deepest parts of it.
In a canon that now spans over 140 releases and counting, for those already attuned, it’s now at the stage where the spine-chilling explorations of Hell on Hearth have become about as common as sticking the kettle on.
Kamyki: Shortcuts
Self-released
Kamyki is the sonic odyssey of Glogow, Poland’s Kacper Burda, and on his third release, Shortcuts, the guitarist pulls a slew of ideas from the dark.
During the decade, Poland has been somewhat of a hotbed for experimental activity (Mila Cloud, Sam to name a few), and Kamyki is the latest to reveal some light with a series of compositions that trudge across the terrains of doomgaze. There’s something more at play here, though. With an intensity beyond two chords, there’s an urgent cinematic rush that underpins Shortcuts.
Those who have been hankering for new music from 65daysofstatic may just find a new refuge with Kamyki’s latest recordings. Something that hits instantly in a sugar rush post-rock kind of way.
Melondruie: Invisible
Cruel Nature Records
Seattle producer, melondruie, is another in the internet age churning out fistfuls of sonic fairy dust, and it continues with their Cruel Nature debut, Invisible.
Their second release already in 2025, Invisible is all about liminal space. Between light and dark, hope and dread, melondruie delivers the kind of cavernous soundscapes that reach every corner.
It’s Flying Saucer Attack at quarter-speed. Hard to imagine, but for all the instrumental-based music out there today, melondruie carves out their own niche – from the artwork to the sound itself, the more time spent with the producer’s body of work, the more it becomes apparent that melondruie is a world builder, and it’s one where liminality is the key feature in it.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Jolanda Moletta: Night Caves
Whitelabrecs
Italian artist, Jolanda Moletta, returns with her second release of 2025 in Night Caves.
Following the collaboration alongside Karen Vogt for their Longform Editions release, Suspended Between Worlds, on Night Caves Moletta explores ancestry, nature, and life’s inner core. All key inspirations behind the array of wordless vocalisations and field recordings that form like a soft mist.
Night Caves is a rolling dreamscape. Touching on the aesthetic previously mastered by Julianna Barwick, while thematically there’s a deep resonance of the past, from a listener’s point of view it’s an open-ended concern. Really, it can be whatever you want it to be, and such as the scope of these recordings, Moletta makes the mind drift off to beautiful places.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Nickolas Mohanna: Speaker Rotations
AKP Recordings
Following his 2023 release, Double Pendulum, on Speaker Rotations New York-based composer, Nickolas Mohanna, returns with a set of knotty compositions that offer a wealth of possibilities.
Improvisations built around arrangements of guitar, trombone, and piano, Mohanna whips up a maelstrom of noise that sits somewhere between what Ex-Easter Island Head delivered with The Lodge and The Necks’ most intense moments.
Born from live experiments and extended techniques with feedback resonance, there’s an evolving loop-based catharsis that unravels throughout these records. Ultimately, it’s the embodiment of experimentation and the intoxicating results it can bring, and on Speaker Rotations, Mohanna delivers his finest album yet.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Joy Moughanni: A Separation from Habit
Ruptured Records
On his debut album, A Separation from Habit, Lebanese producer, Joy Moughanni, provides a plethora of ideas that form as an emotional whirlpool of sound.
At the core of A Separation from Habit are recordings made between 1975 and 1985 by the late Georges Tarazi, repurposed to interrogate Lebanon’s ongoing crises. Amalgamating archival tape recordings, Moughanni’s sonic manipulations are soothing sonic collages that travel beyond the realms of mediation.
A Separation from Habit is a document of trauma, loss and survival. These reimagined recordings, something like a defiant dreamscape, and those bold enough to believe, Moughanni’s creations provide encouragement that there may just be a world beyond this one and all its conflict.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Neutrino Effect: Famine
Labile Records
It’ shard to find the highest point in features like this, but Neutrino Effect’s latest cut, Famine, feels very close to it.
The brainchild of Omaha, Nebraska-based writer / producer, Jon Sanford, under the Neutrino Effect guise, there’s a decade-plus body of work that explores menacing frontiers. On Famine, there’s a greyscale, scanner-like quality that runs through these 14 compositions, which is not a world away from what Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have achieved throughout their numerous film scores. However, Sanford explores further afield, with traces of dance floor dalliances and dirge-y post-rock woven through the patchwork.
Famine is yet another vital string to the bow from an artist who has been absurdly overlooked. Granted, the new music landscape is vast but acts like Neutrino Effect and albums like Famine shouldn’t be neglected any longer.
Poppy H: Treadwater Fury
Fort Evil Fruit
After a spellbinding 2024 which saw the British producer unveil some of the most forward-thinking ideas in the new music sphere, Poppy H returns with their latest endeavour, Treadwater Fury.
In fairness, no one Poppy H release is the same and Treadwater Fury is no different. Inspired by the passing of a close relative in Autumn 2024, Poppy H carves out a series of acoustic-based compositions, melding together field recordings that unfurl with drone and tinges of eastern psychedelia.
Closing with the forlorn acoustic-led Just Can’t Take Another L, Poppy H ties things up with one of their most personal set of recordings so far, and while the producer’s previous works stretch the mind to far out places, there’s a catharsis-like quality to Treadwater Fury.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Gary Salomon: Merry-Go-Round
Preston Capes
Gloucester-born, Athens-based composer / actor, Gary Salomon, makes his solo debut with Merry-Go-Round. Also, a member of the post-music juggernaut, Capac, and alt-rock outfit, Shy Nature, Salomon has spent the last several years performing in theatres across Greece, extending beyond to other parts of Europe and Asia, too.
Merry-Go-Round comprises of three long-form tracks, including five-second quotes taken from rearranged pieces by Bach, Stravinsky and Beethoven. Recorded directly to tape loops, these manipulations, accompanied by modular synthesis hemorrhage like an exploding world.
Quite apt for these times, but what Salomon does here is meld gooey psychedelia with minimalism, and those familiar with Waxing Crescent’s most out-there releases will find that Merry-Go-Round proves to be a worthy ally.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Tree Gardener / Empyrean Pines: Thresholds to Hidden Realms
Fiadh Productions
Digging through the archives, and it’s confirmed. This is the first split release to feature in any WR edition. And what better release than to get into touch with nature via the forest synth exponents, St Paul, Minnesota’s Tree Gardener and anonymous producer, Empyrean Pines, who combine for Thresholds to Hidden Realms.
The duo trade soundscapes that are at the pace of a dripping tap. Think the subtler moments Labradford at 45rpm and that’s the kind of vibe both artists bring during these six compositions.
Over the past 18 months, environmental-based composition has enjoyed some wonderful moments (Hiram and the Bathysphere label to name a few). On Thresholds to Hidden Realms, working their way in from the shores to create something earthy, Tree Gardener / Empyrean Pines get closer to the core of an environment that should be treasured and not destroyed.
Listen / Purchase from Bandcamp
Joni Void: Every Life Is a Light
Constellation Records
Joni Void doesn’t stay still for long. Following the excellent Être Ensemble release earlier this year (Sans Toi – Katuktu Collective), the Montreal experimentalist returns with Every Life Is a Light.
From last year’s vastly underrated Everyday is the Song, Void continues their odyssey in the basin of collage-based experimentalism. While Everyday is the Song contained a woodsy aesthetic, Every Life Is a Light leans forward towards the future. Stitching together music history in subtle forward-thinking ways, here there’s everything from hip-hop and jazz to downtempo Sunday morning chill zones through the lens of electronica.
With the warmer months ahead, Void’s Every Life Is a Light is a beautiful companion to them. Designed for quiet open fields and sunny skies, close your eyes and look up to the sun, those colours of soft pinks and yellows, evocative of the soundscapes Void delivers here.
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13 replies on “Weirdo Rippers #17”
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