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A Magazine for Sheffield

Young Girl The Night Mayor

Taking clear influences from experimental electronic pioneers Autechre and Aphex Twin, Australia's Young Girl conjures a semi-eponymous surreal dreamscape on The Night Mayor through complex and sometimes baffling music.


Released: 16 September 2020
The Night Mayor

The first half of this album is a constantly glitching affair that seems unable to ever sit still or contain its own bulging mass of ideas. Disorientating bleeps and chaotic bursts of percussion accompany wild and playful synths on opening track 'Vomit Nightmares', which feels like a retro computer trying and failing to gain sentience. Even when things get a little more atmospheric on 'The Low Men', with synth pads both warm and unsettling sitting in the mix, the energetic and skittering beats still remain.

'The Red Birds' is a mischievous journey through a psychedelic world of sound, and 'Toilet Nightmares' continues to pack lots into all its gaps despite its slower pulse. 'Codeine' is something of a watershed, stripping things back to a simple, hypnotic loop which gives way to an upbeat guitar passage, acting as a peak amongst the album's valleys of weirdness, and clearing a path for the remaining tracks.

The remainder of The Night Mayor builds from the ground up, the former jittery energy audible only in pockets of echoing vibration, as your brain is softly reset. There are still nervously frayed edges to tracks like 'Frustration Nightmares' and fittingly disturbed undertones to the lulling ambient sounds in closing duo 'Sleep Paralysis' and 'wake up...', but there's an overall sense that some medicated calm has been achieved.

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