The Sick Man Of Europe may be an anonymous musical act, but there is a strong identity to their work. Having released a self-titled debut album last year, they quickly follow up with a sequel that looks to explore a more processed means of communication.
“Through repetition the message has gained weight and become something more urgent,” The Sick Man Of Europe explains on the album’s press release. “The vehicle for this message needed to evolve, grow to attain the strength to carry it. We’ve landed on something more expansive, immediate and immersive. Less is more. Until it isn’t.”
What’s the music like?
There is an impressive assurance about this music that grabs the listener right from the word go, a poise and stature to the production that is only enhanced by the vocals.
There is an extraordinary voice behind this work – The Man bringing a resonant, doom-laden and authoritative voice to music that brings to mind some of the 1980s’ leading vocalists. None more so than Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, though this instrument has a power to its lower register that even he would be proud of. The music has a Germanic feel; sleek and clinical like a well-polished automobile.
The songs are powerful and very much of their time, harnessing formidable Krautrock beats in the likes of Cadogan Gate, a superb song, or the coruscating Love Song. Apathy hammers out its conclusions in an unusual meter, while the title trackbuilds with real purpose, the voice and electronics a thrilling mixture.
Does it all work?
It does. Powerful and distinctive, this music makes a strong impression.
Is it recommended?
It is. An album whose impact only deepens with repeated listening, The Intermittent Signal is darkly uplifting, with a deep resolve that is ultimately inspiring.
For fans of…Depeche Mode, Interpol, Blancmange, The Human League, The Cure
Listen / Buy
Published post no.3,071 – Saturday 7 November 2026
posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release
On 20th November, the Icelandic luminary Bjarki gets physical, with new longplayer The Body Works. Developed in close collaboration with his wife, the Latvian sculptor Brenda Jansone, the project brings together sound and sculpture, treating the human body not as subject matter, but as a medium.
The Body Works begins from a simple idea: sound does not end at the speaker, and music is something that is not only heard, but held, felt, and carried. By translating sound into physical form, the project creates an encounter that exists between listening and touch.
Rhythm is anticipated by muscle, voices affect breathing, and repetition changes our sense of time. Listening is already a physical act. Rather than treating the body as a subject represented by the music, The Body Works treats it as the place where the music happens; the physical and perceptual space through which sound is experienced.
Primarily consisting of left-leaning club music, the LP moves between trap-tinged tech funk, sweaty nocturnal throb, bottom heavy breaks, seedy cowbell acid, pumping techno workouts, doting hi NRG, cosmic homoerotica, and electronic disco. Interspersed and laced atop are more exploratory approaches to sound. Synthesis, field recordings, voices, electroacoustic and musique concrète techniques, plus a dose of offbeat humour are all treated equally as compositional material.
The record travels through ordinary human actions and situations – partying, sleeping, travelling, cooking, flirting, drinking, dancing and listening. These are not presented simply as themes; they become compositional material through which sound, attention, movement and the body interact. “A lot of the record is just weird normal things happening around me. Sleeping, travelling, flirting, drinking water, trying to kill a fly. The more attention you give these things, the stranger they become”, comments Bjarki.
The physical form of The Body Works begins with Bjarki’s own body. Brenda takes moulds directly from his chest and back and develops them into silicone sculptures – a hyperrealistic double of his skin. Track titles and album information are tattooed directly into the silicone surface, on his back. Hand-implanted hair – including strands of Bjarki’s own body hair – spells out the record’s title across the sculpture, on his chest.
The process moves from body casting through sculpting, making further moulds, silicone toning and pouring to painting, toning and perming real human hair, implanting the hair, tattooing, and finally photographing and digitising the finished covers. These sculptures then become the album’s artwork. The work plays deliberately between realism and fiction: a real cast of a real body, but through that process it becomes something the body itself could never be – spelling out words in hair, carrying tattooed track listings, existing as an art object rather than a person.
A body – even a silicone replica one – triggers something in us that flat images and abstract objects don’t. We recognise skin, hair, the small imperfections of a familiar surface, almost instinctively, and it produces a response that’s closer to encountering a person than viewing an artwork. That recognition is exactly what The Body Works is built on. And because the work is physical, it can be touched as well as seen.
Alongside the vinyl and digital release of The Body Works, a limited number of silicone USB fingers will also be released – each cast directly from Bjarki’s own hand, the middle finger, and made individually by Brenda. The idea connects the physical body with the format carrying the music. Rather than a USB drive shaped like anything else, the body itself becomes the object that holds and delivers the album — the format is no longer neutral packaging, but part of “the body.” Each finger contains the complete project: the digital album, bonus tracks, and visual material documenting how the LP was made. The finger refers to the hands-on, tactile process of making and interacting with music. It was a hand that made this album – and now, holding the finger, the listener holds a part of the same hand that made it.
For Bjarki, The Body Works is sound built to be felt, not just heard. For Brenda, it’s a body built to be worn, not just seen. Together, they’ve made an album you can listen to and hold.
Gaspar Claus delivers his first artist album since Tancade, released five years ago. The cello may be his main instrument, but Claus works with Basile3 to use it as a departure point, with electronics intervening as appropriate to create a host of original and intriguing soundworlds.
When speaking of the recent single release Ecstasy, one of the standout points of the album, Claus speaks of how “These sounds were transformed, put through machines, digitized, stretched, sometimes metamorphosed into synthetic textures or even percussion. So it’s not a meeting between cello and electronics, but rather a story of -transformation.”
With Basile3, Claus worked in a custom-built studio alongside producer Basile3, the press release describing their output as “an album shaped by friction and breath, moving between intimate memory, desire, and vital energy. Driven by a fertile tension between the cello and its digital transformation, the record unfolds a shifting sonic landscape where organic fervour meets electronic metamorphosis.”
What’s the music like?
Highly charged. Claus wrings every bit of emotion out of his cello, but also uses it imaginatively when building the electronics, so that on occasion it sounds like a full orchestra.
World of Idols is a solemn but richly coloured opening, making a powerful impression with its broad and slightly sorrowful melody, not to mention the fulsome bass section. Ecstasy on the other hand is brightly coloured and adds beats effectively. Amour constrictor (Fugue) is also a lively number, light hearted and brilliantly realised with its ticking figurations. Meanwhile Chrysalis is evocative, its polka-like dance a proper foot tapper.
Does it all work?
It does, to the point where it is difficult to comprehend this is music born from the cello – Claus covers all voices in his use of polyphony. The pioneering efforts are even better with repeated listening.
Is it recommended?
Yes, without hesitation. An effective, stimulating and deeply moving piece of work.
For fans of…Julia Kent, Sarah Neufeld, Manu Delago, Olafur Arnalds
Described as balancing ‘raw sonic exploration with a strong sense of atmosphere’, Dmitry Polivenko delivers his first solo work as Vigilant for Glacial Movements.
Taking up the story, he describes the album as “an exploration of memory, nostalgia, and the passage of time. It reflects a feeling that returns to me every year—a yearning for a fleeting moment of happiness preserved deep within my childhood. Winter, with its silence and wonder, remains one of my earliest memories: sitting wrapped in a blanket on a sled, carried through snow-covered streets by my father. Today, I walk those same streets alone, guided by fragments of the past. Time can feel like a storm that clouds our vision and pulls us away from ourselves. Yet beneath the weight of accumulated experiences, expectations, and endless information, there remains a quiet certainty: beyond the noise, beyond the dreams and fears, lies the possibility of rediscovering who we truly are. This album is a journey through that landscape of remembrance and self-discovery.”
What’s the music like?
As evocative as the cover art. This music is deep as the ocean but weather-beaten too, its elemental power immediately obvious as the slowly shifting harmonies evolve with the slow tread of a ship or an iceberg.
Winter has his house is as cold as you would expect, though some of the more consonant harmonies raise the temperature a little. By contrast Lullaby is not so restful, with a searching treble line.
There is an icy, industrial air to the likes of Cold silent love but a contrasting charm to the quieter Crystals, which operates above a soft, sonorous drone amid footsteps in the snow. Here Polivenko appears to be channelling childhood memories of being pulled through icy streets on a sled by his father.
Into the black light is shifty and twisted, a fever dream in the snow, resolved by the bright consonance of Somewhere, whose sweeping beauty looks skyward.
Does it all work?
It does, and with its quieter central core the album is ideally structured.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Vigilant writes powerfully from the heart, and the remembered threads of the title combine here to make a substantial and lasting piece of work.
For fans of…Loscil, Tim Hecker, Schneider TM, O Yuki Conjugate
Archives may sound like a B-sides compendium, or a host of rediscovered demos, but it is a wholly new album from intriguing trio Vanishing Twin.
The title reflects the trio’s creative process, where, as singer and founder member Cathy Lucas says, they have a process of “gathering material together, riffing with it, turning it around on itself, trying to put the pieces together and create a story with it”.
The trio have a fluid approach that allows them to exchange ideas through a virtual studio, play each other’s instruments and adopt an improvisatory air on occasion. This keeps a light-hearted air to their music and keeps creativity to the forefront.
What’s the music like?
As original as the creative process suggests it should be. At the root of Vanishing Twin’s music is a beat-based style of music that has close musical alignment with Broadcast and Stereolab, but never sounds like pastiche.
Instead, the trio create compositions with a dark and eerie edge, their music akin to catching sight of an unexpected reflection in the mirror, seeing a sudden shadow out of the corner of your eye or, more playfully, seeing a bat or a bird flit quickly across your vision.
Their combination of funk and wariness is unexpectedly strong, with a cool vocal on Familiar Fruit taken out of its comfort zone by creepy scrapes on the bass. Hazama has an eerie vocal, the end of So Calm even more so in multitude, while the scrunched up, glitchy rhythms of Bring Me The Axe are like a dub ritual in preparation. The title track wavers, the shrill electronics circling ominously.
Does it all work?
Yes – at times Vanishing Twin have a creative tension at play, with something ominous in the air. Creepy, colourful and original.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Archives is a compelling listen, with three imaginative minds making music that both warms and chills the cockles, often simultaneously.
For fans of…Broadcast, Stereolab, Jane Weaver, Dry Cleaning, Peaking Lights
