After first rising to prominence with the expansive, 1980s-inspired dream-pop of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ and its standout tracks, Ethel Cain has spent much of her artistic journey trying to step away from that sound. She’s leaned into a moodier mix of drone, ambient rock, and raw analogue textures. “I’m not a fucking pop artist,” the Tallahassee singer once told The FADER, adding, “I reject that wholeheartedly.” Her experimental projects ‘Perverts’ and ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’ make that stance very clear, and her latest tour often feels like a firm break from the softer sounds that brought her into the spotlight.
For the first of her five headline nights at Hammersmith Apollo, Hayden Anhedönia builds a scene that feels like a slightly playful, gently eerie B-movie graveyard. She spends most of the performance tucked inside a moss-covered altar, surrounded by dramatic lighting and a crucifix mic stand. The show is nearly silent when it comes to onstage chatter. The rare moments she does address the audience are understated and easy to miss. When a fan shouts their love for her, she responds with a simple “Thank you!” from the darkness.
Instead of walking the stage to build energy, the lighting design carries that weight, mirroring the intensity of her songs. During the gritty, heavy ‘Dust Bowl’, she sings inside a slowly circling beam of light that sweeps across the Apollo with piercing brightness, while strobing green and white lights heighten the tension during long instrumental passages.
Ethel Cain. Credit: Connie Burke
As the warm, rough-edged guitars of ‘Knock At The Door’ fill the room, the production shows it can match the strange, atmospheric side of Cain’s catalogue, even if those moments are rare tonight. The set doesn’t lean heavily on ‘Perverts’, but brief pieces of ‘Houseofpsychoticwomn’ and the title track make their way in. The industrial ballad ‘Vacillator’ appears in full, bathed in stark white light as she softly sings, “If you love me, keep it to yourself,” on a track heavy with buried emotion.
For the most part, the night is devoted to ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’. The album slows the cinematic Southern Gothic of her debut ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ and explores the dizzying pull of a teenage love triangle. The shimmering synths of ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ and the lush strings of ‘Nettles’ bring an early glow, before the performance drifts into hazy ambient dream-rock reminiscent of Grouper. The mood is thick and steady, though it lacks big shifts in dynamics, leaving the set on a single emotional wavelength.
When ‘Tempest’ is briefly stopped and restarted so medics can help an audience member, ‘Waco, Texas’ follows as the main set closer. The encore then pivots toward older material, shifting the tone entirely. After a heartfelt ‘A House in Nebraska’, Anhedönia steps out from behind her green altar for the first and last time, moving into the brighter side of her discography with ‘Crush’ and ‘American Teenager’. Even though she has expressed discomfort with her most well-known tracks, their contrast with her darker material gives the finale a powerful lift. After holding the room in quiet tension for so long, their arrival feels like a release that lands with even greater impact.
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Aphex Twin quietly shared two new songs on his SoundCloud account, surprising fans with the sudden upload.
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The tracks are called ‘Zahl am1 live track 1’ and ‘Zahl am1 live track 1c f760m1 unfinshd’. They seem to be two different takes on the same piece of music and were added to his page (username: user18081971) yesterday (November 27).
Both songs use cover photos that show the artist, real name Richard D. James, in the ocean with his partner. In the description for ‘Zahl am1 live track 1c f760m1 unfinshd’, he wrote, “Got many requests for this one from a few years back. Italy, pic with my love from Sicily recently. Need sun, relentlessly raining in the UK. Mixed down on the Zähl, think there are better mixes, will upload them if I find them.”
You can listen to the songs below:
The electronic musician’s most recent project was the 2024 compilation ‘From The Merch Desk (2016-2023)’, which also arrived without advance notice. It collects everything the celebrated producer and DJ had released through eight years of vinyl editions that fans could only get from the merch stand at his live performances.
The release followed a new expanded version of his 1994 album ‘Selected Ambient Works II’ in October for its 30th anniversary. His most recent full studio album is 2014’s Grammy Award winning ‘Syro’.
In 2025, Aphex Twin has put much of his attention into his work with streetwear brand Supreme. This has included creating a playlist for the company that features nearly 200 songs, most of which lean toward calm and slow moving styles.
