LP/CD/CS
AD93 afford a wider release to the debut album by New York resident, Dagmar Zuniga, a collection of haunted lo-fi folk vignettes first released in the opening month of 2025 but really sound like they come beamed in from another space and time entirely. Specifically, the New Weird American underground of the early 21st Century, where trad. folk influences were intersecting with punk/lo-fi ideology to conjure something both alien and ancient, like finding the embalmed corpse of a Grey inside the sarcophagus of the Pyramids. Zuniga has a similar stargazing sense of wonder present within the early transmissions of Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, though her overall aesthetic is somewhat more ghostly and ethereal, at times sounding as if a spirit world incarnation of Lou Reed were in communion with Liz Harris - indeed, there's a few tracks here that really remind me of limbo dwelling reimaginings of 'Perfect Day', which essentially sounds like I'm describing Nico while desperately trying to not say the word 'Nico'. Either way, it's no bad thing and you take the point. We'd have once described this as 'freak folk', which I think is a reasonable description if by 'freak' we are to mean singular, unique and of its own mind. It's been a while since I've considered any new music from New York to be interesting let alone freaky (the reasons for which I'll leave for another time), and then along comes a record that readjusts your perceptions in a single listen simply by virtue of its own sense of self. Whether in filth your mystery... proves to be an outlier or the start of something else, time will tell. For now, we've a debut of remarkable poise, fragility and poetic mystery that could just as easily fall apart in your hands as crystallise into its own diamond constellation. A 2026 highlight unquestionably.
FFO: Grouper, White Magic, Broadcast, Nico, Brannten Schnure
