Holy Wave "i'm DADA" [180g]

Working alongside experimental duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete at their studio El Derrumbe inEnsenada, Mexico, the sessions folded community into the album, though it's emotional core hadalready formed over months of pre-production. Joo Joo Ashworth, mixing engineer and longtimefriend, also provided a pivotal presence helping crystallize the album's rhythmic language andsubtly expanding the band's sound. The songs began reflecting conversations about fatherhood andpartnership, breakups and estrangement, the queasy acceleration of AI, and what it means toremain present and principled while the world lurches unpredictably forward. This tension is not announced but absorbed into the music. Holy Wave stretches their familiar senseof woozy atmosphere into something leaner and more direct. There are more loops and sampleswoven throughout than before, grooves that feel constructed, cyclical, hypnotic. Some tracks drifttoward dub's elastic spaciousness; others pulse with cinematic downtempo gravity. There is a freshsense of momentum throughout the record, rhythms that pull forward, dream-saturated textures,sheets of fuzz, and softly suspended vocals. "dewey's dirge" unfolds patiently: hazy guitars bloom, a softened motorik pulse moving steadilybeneath. The vocals remain submerged, widening rather than exploding. It feels expansive andreflective, a comedown hymn that trades drama for immersion. "i'm DADA," by contrast, locks into alean, circular groove. A tight drum figure, rubbery bassline, and clipped guitar phrase repeat untilthey begin to feel animate. Lyrically, the song circles the complicated devotion of fatherhood, writtenin a brief pocket of rare solitude for a parent: Always loving (Try to do what's right) / Alwayslearning (There's never enough time). "s33. u. in/HAL" plays like a transmission caught midair, faintlymechanical, immersive without ever fully resolving, capturing the album's central sensation: the act oftrying to communicate clearly through static. If earlier Holy Wave records often felt defined by their sense of drift, i'm DADA feels newlygrounded. The album doesn't abandon immersion; it disciplines it. Grooves settle, repetitions accrueweight, and the music is composed and unshaken amongst it's heavier themes. What emerges is notreinvention but a sharpening, with Holy Wave sounding less like