It appears that the award-winning composer is here joined by their Curl collective in ‘Blue Alibi’ for an album that almost preternaturally collapses the vernacular of grunge rock, free jazz, indie-pop, rap, and chamber music, into scenes limned with the skill of a proper soundtrack scorer. At this point we’re just going to refer to this style as Mica Music, because for all intents and purposes, there’s just nobody making anything quite like it in the modern sphere. It’s the type of music that would puzzle a computer tasked with classifying its taxonomy, all asymmetric, bittersweetly discordant and metered off-centre in a way that defies categorisation.

While there’s no explicit mention of lockdown fuckries, aside from Brother May’s “middle finger to Boris Johnson and all the cops now” on the album’s bitterly puckered ace ‘Om Om Om Om’, the album’s sore blue pallor certainly feels like it was sculpted by the experience, or is implicitly realised as a salve for it. From the scratchy, free-jazz Company-isms and deadpan vox of ‘Whack’, to the mumbly introspection of ‘Rose’, thru the Sub-pop styles of ‘Liquorice’, and exquisite nap anxiety ambient in ‘Monk’ and ‘Blue Shit’, or the devastating torpor of ‘Waves’ and biley reflux of Flying Nun-esque guitars in ‘Outro’, it’s an ideal soundtrack to miserable, locked down times.

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2021