nowlistening

Now Listening: Music for covens, dub technique, strange guitars

Records by OKO DJ, Jerod Rivera + Cat Lauigan, Moin, Mana Dealer, Maude Vôs.

Chris Zaldua

08 Apr 2026 • 5 min read

Messier 58, a galaxy photographed by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

OKO DJ – As Above, So Below (Stroom 2025)

My favorite records refuse categorization. As Above, So Below is the debut album by Parisian artist OKO DJ, aka Marine Tordjemann, the founder of LYL Radio Paris and an affiliate of Brothers From Different Mothers, the now-shuttered Marseille label. Like others in the Paris-Lyon-Marseille left-field freak-music axis, OKO DJ melts sonic boundaries as a matter of course. The mood is often meandering, jazzy, and poetic, like the murky spoken word on "La Colline au Ciel." Some tracks feel destined for the club—a particularly adventurous club, maybe—like "Erotic Love Triangle," a devastatingly good half-time banger with sing-song vocals, or the final track, a Kosmische journey featuring fellow French oddity Eiger Drums Propaganda. Others, like "Ivres," feel sorcerous, the sound of a gathering coven. The whole album, really, is bound by a particular occult sensibility—saturnine, but neither grim nor malicious. To put it another way: Music to play in the dark is rarely this well-lit.

Jerod Rivera feat. Cat Lauigan – Seamstress Clock Remixes (Cone Shape Top 2026)

Last year, Cone Shape Top's Cat Lauigan contributed spoken word to Oakland artist Jerod Rivera's second album, Dot-Dash, on "Seamstress Clock." On Cone Shape Top's first vinyl release, that track is refracted in five versions of left-field sound. It's a Bay Area production through and through, except for two out-of-towners: German zoner Philipp Otterbach turns in a slow-burning post-metal remix with cascading riffs, the record's most idiosyncratic offering; Seattle-to-Berlin abstractionist Slowfoam moves oppositely, showcasing Lauigan's poetry amidst glassy synth warble. San Francisco artist False Aralia turns out a rubbery micro-minimal dub techno jam, ideal for late-night club use. Jon Carr—in trio S'hells Gate with Lauigan—chops her vocal into an ominous death-step jaunt. But my favorite is the trip-hop majesty from Motoko & Myers, aka Oakland duo Wonja and DJML. (Dan, DJML, played live drums on their remix.) The bassline is what dreams are made of, and I dream they write a whole album in this vein.

Moin – You Never End (AD 93 2024)

After debuting three tracks of brutally good butcher-shop post-punk in 2013, Moin—then seemingly a one-off from British duo Raime, crucial progenitors of the New Industrial sound—laid dormant until 2021, when Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead were joined by polymath drummer Valentina Magaletti, and the project surged with new life. The glib take is that Moin sounds like Slint: angular post-rock-core featuring minor-key riffs and spare drums. But Moin is its own beast, riddled with the DNA of left-field electronic music. Repetition is constant; verse-chorus structure is nonexistent. Human voices are deployed as musical phonemes, cut up and disjointed. Except when they aren't—here Moin collaborates with vocalists for the first time, and the results are truly sublime: Olan Monk intones downwards, Coby Sey patters London-like, and James K breathes vaporously. And then there's Sophia Al-Mara, a poet ("I really appreciate this 'cuz nobody ever asks to use my voice for a track") whose extraordinary paean to life, love, aging, and being makes me well up with tears, every time, Pavlov-style. Life is beautiful, and so is this record.

Mana Dealer – 1 (Drift Ritual 2026)

Mana Dealer is the latest alias of Irish artist Eamon Ivri, whose 2025 album as Mineral Stunting, Come Rain Come Shine, was a beautifully swampy saunter through tidal ambient sound. As Mana Dealer, Ivri trades the whirlpool for the dancefloor, presenting three dubbed-out hand-drum psychedelic techno rollers. These aren't bog-standard, paint-by-numbers dub techno tracks, the kind of thing that approaches vaporwave levels of pastiche. Their dub influence is palpable, like on "Tankard," an extended-length space jam with echoed-up percussion and vocal samples, sounding altogether very Bristolian. But the real magic is in these tracks' bassline grooves: On "Greasetrap," which I've been playing out to great effect, the deceptively muted bassline lurches forward like a wave, bringing your hips along for the ride. On "Dream Tool Roller," the bassline rollicks nervously, undulating to match its higher tempo. Groove is everything, and this EP has it in spades.

Maude Vôs – Astral Intervals (Delusional Records 2025)

Since 2021, Los Angeles producer-DJ Maude Vôs has released a slew of club-ready digital EPs—including several through her own imprint, Delusional Records. Astral Intervals is her first vinyl release, and the first for her label, too. Listening in, it's clear why: all six tracks (five originals, one remix) are pearlescent bangers, each different stylistically but unified by lush, crystal-clear sound design. After a too-brief opener, Vôs lifts off with "Solarcoaster," a powered-up drum 'n bass workout complete with vocal refrains and stepped synth leads, real proper business. "Blue Phosphenes" is the EP's most enigmatic cut, a pitch-perfect return to early '00s IDM—think Toytronic or Ai Records. "Floating in Youphoria" goes full trance mode, cheeky like its title. "Magic Always Lateball" is squirrely electro, tendered by melodic pads. Lastly, Berlin producer Prieste5s reworks the opening track into a choppy breakbeat journey. No gimmicks, just tracks—that's the stuff.