The Drift: the month’s best in weird and experimental music
Our first look at the world’s best new weird releases from the month of March
G’day fellow Drifters. Look alive.
This is the 13th ever issue of The Drift, but we’re anything but unlucky here. Ushering in Springtime 2026 has been a litany of instant-classic records in our weird little Driftosphere, and suddenly all systems are go. Narrowing it down, rather than sourcing enough, has been tough, and a whole manner of recurring characters from this column have been up to their old tricks.
Before we begin on our journey into last month’s best weird and experimental music, though, I’d like to point you in the direction of a piece I did for Loud And Quiet last week. If this column is of any interest to you, I can assure you that my interview with Cameron Picton about My New Band Believe will be too; the ex-Black Midi man discussed Bert Jansch, friendship and improvisation, as he steered me through his new record (which is, of course, suitably weird).
Anyway…
Akkajee - Pölynkerääjä
Where else to begin but New Weird Finland? Akkajee are an avant-folk duo, formed in Helsinki by Iida Savolainen and Meriheini Luoto, and they make music that is both naturalistic and otherworldly; delicately precise and absolutely wild.
Pölynkerääjä is their third album (in a leisurely 13-year stretch), and it is the most essential and complete release of the year to date. The missing link between Širom’s imaginary folk, the heavenly glow of 4AD’s Bulgarian folk records and Arvo Pärt’s post-minimalist swell, Akkajee’s music is a real behemoth – it is beautiful in the extreme, but it is also delivered with a real feral, wild-eyed bloodthirst that is all too rare.
The duo are proficient in a whole arsenal of stringed-instruments, and so often they play them like the world is ending. The hectic groove of ‘Kello lyö’ sees a range of strings bowed, plucked and thwacked; it is somehow extremely heavy and alive without any real percussion or amplification.
So magnificent. Pölynkerääjä is my favourite album of Q1.
Antropoceno – No Ritmo da Terra
Brazilian artist Antropoceno aka Lua Viano has made a hell of a splash in certain corners of the Internet, and I think it’s high time that everyone became acquainted with her work. Her debut, Natureza morta, was one of my favourites of last year, and her style – a mixture of Brazilian Folk styles with post-rock and post-metal – is out of this world.
No ritmo da Terra is her second album, and the third of a trilogy inspired by the indigenous Brazilian philosopher Ailton Krenak. The message of Antropoceno’s work is one of hope, a combination of ancestral and futurist philosophies to ail our broken world, but the music is writhing and beastly. The rhythms that you’d associate with Bossa, Afoxé and Candomblé all enter the fray, whilst an array of scorched riffs and ballasted grooves corrupt and contort. The project is ambitious as all hell, but Antropoceno has more than enough chops to pull it off.
Listen to the squall of ‘Ayaba Oxum’ and tell me you do not need more of this in your life.
Wendy Eisenberg – Wendy Eisenberg
Wendy Eisenberg is probably best known for their searching, discordant work in the avant-garde. A shredding improviser, a virtuoso at the heart of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, their work is some of the most imaginative guitar music in the world today. This is why their latest album – a decade deep into their career – being a self-titled record that is a collection of stargazing Americana, is so fascinating to me.
Wendy Eisenberg is eight brilliant songs long, and has just enough otherly touches to make it a good fit for this column. Eisenberg’s voice is ephemeral, floating, like Judee Sill or Bill Callahan, and the arrangements are cosmic. ‘Vanity Paradox’ is my favourite; the twangy guitar has touches of American Football about it, whilst a discordant chamber orchestra freaks out in tandem with Eisenberg’s wistful vocals.
I have long been of the opinion that the best kind of music happens when the real weirdos try to make something palatable; this wilted Americana album from a guitar improv legend is testament to that.
Angine de Poitrine – Vol. II
These masked Quebecois freaks have been all over my social media, and I have to report that I think they’re legit. Angine de Poitrine have got it.
A mysterious duo, they make mathy jam-rock, dressed up as polka dot alien magicians. One of them plays the drums, the other plays a two-necked guitar-and-bass with obscene proficiency. This would normally piss me off beyond belief, but they are so good that, in the pantheon of “costume rockers”, they are the exception that proves the rule. Vol. II is a propulsive collection of King Gizzled psyche musick that showcases everything great and good in their obscene world.
Every track is about six minutes long, powered by math-rock drumming and a furling and unfurling of noodly microtonal guitar motifs. I still love rock music with my whole heart, and this kind of nonsense is why.
Maryam Saleh – Syrr
Conceived in 2022, when Egyptian singer and actor Maryam Saleh left her home in Cairo to trek deep into the desert, Syrr is an Arabic folk album that is equal parts intricate and groovy. Nine years since the last music Saleh released, it sees her collaborating once more with Cairo’s leading guitar hero Maurice Louca, and achieving a special kind of musical alchemy.
Featuring an incendiary oud performance from Louca – where he shreds it like Hendrix on the guitar – this is a real fusion gem that sees Saleh and her band traverse and embellish several styles of traditional Arabic song. Her voice is powerful, trembling, divine, and the arrangements are so imaginative, melding the traditional with the modern. Maryam Saleh has released a brilliant album here.
Assorted Arcana: the best singles, reissues, DJ mixes, and everything else
Returning champions Weed420, the premiere reggaeton-shoegaze-rap posse in Venezuela, release their first mixtape of the year, the fuzzy Estoy viviendo.
Collaboration of the year just dropped. Guatemalan cello iconoclast Mabe Fratti meets fractured guitar king Bill Orcutt. Marriage made in heaven. They share the title track of their collaborative album, which will be out in May.
A new EP from Los Thuthanaka, Wak’a is a slightly more atmospheric take on the band’s self-titled debut album from last year. Joshua Chuqumia Crampton’s Earth-shattering guitar meets an apocalypse of sampledelia. One of the best bands in the world right now.
Experimental artists Cristóbal García Belmont and Armando González Sosto released their collaborative debut La sintaxis de un lenguaje cambia dependiendo del nivel de abstracción. It begins with one piece, all analogue buzz and squall, recorded to tape, which is then contorted and grizzled beyond belief over the course of the album by the duo. A remixer’s Disintergration Loops, adventures in sound art.
Krautrock drone duo France released a new live album, in collaboration with State51. Loud, shaking, shuddering, it places the colossal drone heft of the hurdy-gurdy front-and-centre; you’ve got to catch ‘em live, folx.
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