Christopher Nosnibor
Bearsuit Records – 23rd January 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s been a little while since our favourite label for oddball quirky stuff, Edinburgh’s Bearsuit Records, tickled our eardrums with new noise, but they’re kicking off 2026 with the eponymous debut from Elkeyes, a new addition to the roster. And suffice it to say, it’s a good fit in their catalogue of curious compositional contortions. And since we have Wolf Eyes and Hawk Eyes, KATSEYE, and, er, Eagle Eye Cherry, why not Elkeyes? It’s an interesting choice of creature, but one which seems appropriate for this intriguingly leftfield musical project – although my eternal internal game of Mallett’s Mallet leads me to conclude that Elkeye Brooks should also be a band name. Christ only knows what they would sound like, but surely it would be no stranger than this twisted concoction, which should be filed in the ‘experimental electronics’ section.
‘Trial’ conjures the disorientating bewilderment of Kafka’s labyrinthine novel via the medium of sonic collage which brings together warping synths, clinks and clatters, disembodied, ghostly voices, sweeping string and echo-laden horns which add the most incongruous – yet somehow fitting – jazz element imaginable, plus fizzing blasts of extraneous noise.
‘Yamanote Line’ twitters and flaps its way into the realms of ambient abstraction, building atmosphere and an air of the uncanny. It’s not dark in the horror sense, but sets the nerves jangling, particularly in the quieter passages which evoke bleak moorlands and deserted cemeteries. This is the beauty of abstract, ambient, instrumental works, works which are free from the constraints of conventional form: rather than direct the listener in a specific direction, they encourage the opening of neural pathways and invite the formation of visualisations and ideas by free association. The scraping, trilling string sounds, stark piano chords, and random chimes which reverberate through the haunting ‘Thalassophobia’ (the fear of deep bodies of water, such as the ocean, seas, or lakes’).
Ironically, ‘The Dark Forest’ is the most light-hearted piece on the album, skipping oscillations and chiming chanks like dappled sunlight skips around this way and that on the album’s shortest track, although it does fade to darkness with a gong-like rumble and some dissonant chimes at the end.
There are vast expanses of minimalism. Soft tones drift. Time sits in suspension. Voices ring out – operatic, ghostly – amidst spacey swirls of phase. ‘Breathing the Blues’ is barely there at times, and the final cut, ‘Fallen’ is similarly sparse.
Over the course of these eight tracks, Elkeyes wander into some dark places, riven with static and low-level rumbles which disseminate tension, scrape at the cranium, gnaw at the intestines and fuck you up by stealth. In places, this feels like a slow unpicking of the seams of musical conventions. It’s sparse and transportive, hypnotic and simultaneously tense and soothing. Elkeyes are all the contradictions. And that is reason to love them.
AA
Aural Aggravation 