Felicity J Lord - FJL

Stroom - LP

Belgium, 2025

Experimental / Indie / Brainrot

Felicity J Lord redirects pipelines of slop into the happily insoluble jigsaw that is their debut album, FJL, convincingly bringing together cellphone recordings, 128 kbps YouTube to MP3's and uncleared samples into a South London Ableton workspace that exudes an inimitable British gloom: cold ashtrays and half-empty bags of crips, tales of damp flat-shares under miserable weathers - as hinted by the opening track that quotes The Sundays' "Can't Be Sure". Simply some of the best bits and songs assembled into an album coming out of the world of lowkey Dean Blunt-obsessed art school students in the post-covid era. Best of 2025!

Hyper referencing British pop culture & beyond (mainstream and indie, high and low), unapologetically sampling Nelly and Kelly Rowland's "Dilemma" and Amy Jo Johnson, FJL offers a rare GENUINELY contemporary regurgitation of 1990's alternative and 00's sleaze, carefully laid out into a series of 26 songs. 26 (very) short skits and micro indie tunes, sewn together into a merry clunky patchwork, or, perhaps more accurately, some late-teenager scrap booking work.

FJL will probably not sound that odd to those chronically online, doom scrollers and meticulous brainrot archivists alike, but it traduces the (musical and extra musical) spirit of our age in a miraculously coherent and enjoyable way - something that very few contemporary acts succeeded to do - managing to zoom in and zoom out seamlessly, loosing itself in a pixelated blur before suddenly showing a somewhat clear and detailed picture of what that chaotic of a year 2025 was. (M/M)