Blending the theatrical intensity of Scott Walker, the abrasive experimentation of Death Grips, and the hypnotic energy of Sufi trance and free jazz, “The Stranger” exists somewhere between industrial electronics, cinematic surrealism, and avant-garde performance. We speak with the artist behind the track about unconventional collaborations, sonic experimentation, hauntology, and the forthcoming album There Comes A Darkness.
What happens when a piece of music refuses to obey the rules of genre, structure, or even conventional logic?
For the experimental musician behind “The Stranger,” the answer involves treating sound as a collection of fragments that can be dismantled, distorted, and reassembled into something entirely unfamiliar.
Drawing from an unusually expansive range of influences, the track occupies a space where theatrical vocals collide with processed instrumentation, abrasive electronics, and free-form improvisation. Scott Walker’s dramatic experimentalism, the confrontational energy of Death Grips, and the hypnotic intensity of Sufi trance all provide reference points for a composition that seems determined to resist easy categorization.
Yet despite its complexity, “The Stranger” began with something relatively simple: a bassline.
Inspired by the muscular low-end grooves of Def Squad’s “Full Cooperation” and Massive Attack’s “Splitting The Atom,” the track gradually developed into an unpredictable collage of crooning vocals, heavily manipulated noise, and a saxophone performance that pushes the arrangement into increasingly surreal territory.
The result is music that feels simultaneously deliberate and unstable, as though every element has been carefully placed inside a machine that might malfunction at any moment.
That tension between meticulous construction and apparent chaos is central to the artist’s approach.
Rather than pursuing a conventional relationship between melody, rhythm, and harmony, he gravitates toward sounds that appear incompatible, searching for unexpected connections between them.
His own description of the process is particularly revealing: assembling a Frankenstein monster inside Kraftwerk’s laboratory.
It’s an image that captures the collision of organic expression and mechanical precision at the heart of his work.
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Building a Frankenstein Monster in Kraftwerk’s Laboratory
There is a particular kind of creative freedom that emerges when an artist stops worrying about whether different influences are supposed to belong together.
“The Stranger” thrives on that freedom.
Its musical vocabulary stretches across decades and disciplines, from hip-hop production and industrial electronics to experimental rock and improvised jazz.
Rather than smoothing over those differences, the arrangement seems to exaggerate them.
The bassline provides a foundation, but the surrounding instrumentation constantly challenges the listener’s sense of stability.
Vocals appear within a landscape of distorted textures, while the saxophone introduces a more unpredictable, almost unruly dimension.
The track’s complexity is not necessarily the result of a lengthy or meticulously planned writing process.
In fact, the artist describes putting the initial composition together relatively quickly.
What matters is the transformation that happens afterward.
Sounds are processed, manipulated, and pushed beyond their familiar identities until they become components of a larger sonic environment.
The artist compares the experience to carving an intricate sculpture or constructing a Swiss watch out of phoenix feathers.
It’s a wonderfully absurd metaphor, but it also captures something important about experimental composition.
The objective is not randomness for its own sake.
It’s to discover a form of coherence that might only become apparent once seemingly incompatible elements have been brought together.
When Instruments Lose Their Identities
Two important collaborators helped expand the sonic possibilities of “The Stranger”: UK saxophonist Marcus Cummins and guitarist Michael Guarrine.
Cummins entered the picture through a chance meeting at a WFMU holiday party in Jersey City.
Their conversation led to a musical connection, particularly after the artist discovered Cummins’ work with the band Time Trout.
Guarrine, meanwhile, was already a longtime acquaintance and is known as the vocalist of Chicago post-punk band Nude Model.
Both musicians contributed performances that became integral to the track.
But listeners expecting to immediately identify a conventional saxophone or guitar part may be surprised.
Their contributions were deliberately subjected to extensive processing, transforming the original performances into sounds that are nearly unrecognizable.
The decision reflects a broader fascination with the relationship between human expression and electronic manipulation.
A musician’s performance begins as a physical act: breath moving through a saxophone, fingers interacting with guitar strings, and a body responding instinctively to rhythm.
Technology then intervenes, reshaping those gestures into something more abstract.
The result exists somewhere between human performance and electronic construction.
That ambiguity is one of the track’s defining characteristics.
The Sound of a Broken Future
There is also something distinctly cinematic about “The Stranger.”
Its textures evoke a world in which familiar sounds have deteriorated, as though fragments of music from different periods have been recovered from damaged recordings and played back through malfunctioning equipment.
The sensation is reminiscent of a broken tape machine running at inconsistent speeds.
Time seems to stretch, collapse, and occasionally lose its rhythm altogether.
Rather than relying on a single piece of vintage equipment, the artist achieves these effects by pushing digital processing tools and plug-ins toward their limits.
The goal is to create sounds that remain musical even when their internal logic becomes chaotic.
That approach connects naturally to the concept of hauntology, a cultural framework concerned with the persistence of the past, unrealized futures, and the strange familiarity of recycled sounds and images.
The artist cites cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s writing on retro-futurism, recycled culture, and alternate histories as an important intellectual influence.
Those ideas offer a useful lens through which to understand the music.
Rather than presenting a clean vision of the future, “The Stranger” seems to imagine a world assembled from the remnants of several different futures that never quite arrived.
Its sonic instability becomes a kind of storytelling.
The distorted textures, unexpected transitions, and fractured arrangements suggest an environment where history, technology, and memory have become entangled.
Horror Soundtracks Without the Horror
The cinematic dimension of the artist’s work is hardly accidental.
Alongside his experimental releases, he also composes soundtrack music and plans to collect that material into a separate album scheduled for late 2027.
His interest in film music extends particularly to horror soundtracks, which he admires for their willingness to abandon conventional musical restraint.
In those compositions, scraping noises, dramatic horn blasts, and disorienting string arrangements can coexist without requiring the kind of harmonic resolution associated with more traditional music.
Horror scores frequently use sound to destabilize the listener’s expectations.
A familiar instrument becomes threatening. A conventional melody is interrupted by an unsettling texture. Silence suddenly gives way to overwhelming noise.
For an experimental producer, those techniques offer a rich vocabulary.
Ironically, the artist admits that he is often too frightened to watch the films themselves.
The soundtracks, however, provide more than enough inspiration.
That relationship with cinematic sound also helps explain the atmosphere of his forthcoming album.
Tentatively titled There Comes A Darkness, the record is expected in May or June 2027 and promises a more expansive exploration of dystopian and apocalyptic themes.
If “The Stranger” offers an introduction to that world, the album appears poised to develop its unsettling atmosphere on a larger scale.
From Experimental Collage to Industrial Dancefloor
Despite its cerebral and often disorienting qualities, the music is not disconnected from the physical experience of rhythm.
A techno remix of “The Stranger” by producer BrokinPaper was scheduled for November, offering another interpretation of the track’s underlying energy.
Known for bringing an EBM and industrial edge to his electronic productions, BrokinPaper approaches dance music with a sense of aggression that complements the original’s abrasive textures.
The collaboration illustrates the flexibility of experimental composition.
A track that initially exists as a fragmented sonic collage can be reconstructed around a more direct rhythmic framework without necessarily losing its personality.
In that sense, remixing becomes another form of creative experimentation.
The original recording is not treated as a finished object that must remain untouched.
Instead, it becomes raw material for a new interpretation.
For an artist whose entire practice revolves around dismantling and rebuilding sound, that exchange feels particularly appropriate.
With There Comes A Darkness on the horizon, “The Stranger” offers an intriguing introduction to a creative world in which musical boundaries are less important than the possibilities that emerge when those boundaries are ignored.
We spoke with the artist about the track’s unusual influences, his collaborations with Marcus Cummins and Michael Guarrine, his fascination with cinematic sound, and why even the most chaotic music needs to follow its own internal logic.
In Conversation: The Making of “The Stranger”
“The Stranger” blends an incredible mix of influences, from Scott Walker to Death Grips and Sufi trance free jazz. How did this specific sound and concept start coming together?
“The Stranger” was pieced together pretty quickly. I took an over-the-top bassline that was spiritually inspired by tracks like Def Squad’s “Full Cooperation” and Massive Attack’s “Splitting The Atom” and layered some heavily processed noise, crooning vocals and a wild saxophone solo over it.
And voilà: the weirdest song in America!
Can you walk us through your typical creative process when assembling such complex, multilayered electronic arrangements?
I like to take disparate elements and influences that shouldn’t work together and stitch them up like Frankenstein’s monster in Kraftwerk’s lab.
It’s like carving an intricate sculpture, like building a Swiss watch out of phoenix feathers.
How did the collaboration with UK saxophonist Marcus Cummins and guitarist Michael Guarrine come about for this track?
I met Marcus at a WFMU holiday party in Jersey City and we hit it off. I think it was because he’s from Battersea in the UK, with that famous power plant on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals album.
Later on, I listened to his band Time Trout and was blown away, so I asked him to be on the record.
Michael I’ve known for years. He’s the vocalist of the underrated Chicago post-punk band Nude Model.
Both their parts are so heavily processed as to sound nearly unrecognizable as the product of human endeavour. That was intentional.
Your music often carries a distinct cinematic or hauntological quality. What non-musical influences, like films, books, or visual art, fed into the making of this release?
I actually write a lot of soundtrack music, so I’m glad you noticed that aspect of my work!
I’m planning to put that all into an album that will be released in late 2027.
I also listen to a lot of horror movie soundtracks, as they often have a wild and irrational quality, with crazy scraping noises mixed with horn blares and drunken underwater string sections and things like that.
But I’m usually too chickenshit to watch the actual movies though, lol.
And yes, I’m definitely drawn to Mark Fisher’s ideas on retro-futurism, recycled culture and alternate histories.
I am basically a cross-hatching of all my influences and experiences over the years.
With a techno remix by BrokinPaper scheduled for November, how does it feel to hand your work over to another artist to recontextualize?
BrokinPaper is one of the best electronic producers on the scene right now and it was great working with him.
He gives all his techno productions a kind of EBM/industrial sheen to them that is really aggro for the dancefloor!
The release description notes that these tracks feel like they’re playing at different speeds on a broken tape machine. What equipment or production techniques were key to achieving that degraded, time-warped feel?
I just like experimenting and pushing effects and plug-ins as far as they can go, and still be in the realm of the “musical” despite being totally chaotic and illogical.
My songs often have their own lurching internal logic.
Can you give us a small teaser of what to expect from the full upcoming album compared to this single?
I’m really excited to finish my album. It’s slated for release in May or June 2027.
It’s my most ambitious record yet and will definitely have some cool surprises and collaborations on it.
It’s tentatively titled There Comes A Darkness and definitely has a bit of an apocalyptic and dystopian texture to it.
What are you hoping listeners take away after experiencing “The Stranger” for the first time?
I hope my listeners enjoy these surprisingly eccentric twists and turns, and are challenged yet gratified to be in the presence of my genius! 😉
Finding Order in the Chaos
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of “The Stranger” is the way it challenges the distinction between disorder and artistic intention.
At first encounter, its unpredictable arrangements and distorted instrumentation might suggest a deliberate rejection of structure.
But beneath the surface, there is an unmistakable fascination with construction.
The artist’s comparison of his process to building a Swiss watch out of phoenix feathers is revealing.
A Swiss watch represents mechanical precision, while phoenix feathers belong to the realm of mythology and impossibility.
Combining the two suggests an artistic practice concerned with creating intricate systems from materials that seemingly refuse to cooperate.
That tension defines much of the music.
Human performances are transformed into unfamiliar textures. Musical influences separated by decades are brought into direct conversation. Rhythms and arrangements develop their own strange sense of time.
The result is not simply experimental music for the sake of experimentation.
It is an attempt to construct a distinctive sonic language from the accumulated fragments of cultural history.
And perhaps that’s where the artist’s interest in hauntology becomes especially meaningful.
In a contemporary landscape where music is constantly referencing, revisiting, and reinterpreting its own past, originality may no longer be about inventing something entirely disconnected from what came before.
Instead, it can emerge from finding unexpected relationships between familiar elements.
“The Stranger” embraces that possibility.
It transforms influences into raw materials, treats technology as an instrument of creative disruption, and invites listeners into a world that is simultaneously recognizable and deeply unfamiliar.
With There Comes A Darkness planned for 2027, the artist appears ready to explore that world even further.
Whether the result is apocalyptic, dystopian, cinematic, or simply gloriously strange, one thing seems certain: conventional expectations are unlikely to survive the journey intact.
And if the goal is to challenge listeners while keeping them entertained, “The Stranger” makes a convincing opening statement.
“The Stranger” introduces the sonic world of the forthcoming album There Comes A Darkness, tentatively scheduled for May or June 2027, with a separate collection of soundtrack compositions also planned for late 2027.
