4 New Albums You Need: Maiya Blaney, Leikeli47, and more

New York’s Maiya Blaney throws everything at the wall on A Room With A Door That Closes. The producer and songwriter’s debut album veers between ambient bliss, dizzying drum and bass, and fuzzed out rockstar cosplay in an unrestrained grab bag of underground sounds. Whether she is blending jungle and punk on “fumbled,” leaning into noughties nostalgia (the scuzzy and debased “Carmen Electra”), or, as on trip-hop ballad “Honey I,” writing about a loss of control, Blaney’s songs are delivered with clarity of thought and a gratifying directness. In a time when many albums are hamstrung by homogeneity, A Room With A Door That Closes thrives in its unpredictability. — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Leikeli47 has always been a formidable storyteller. With her signature balaclava, she emerged in 2017 with a brash flow and novelistic bars about life and beauty in New York City. On her newest, Lei Keli ft. 47 / For Promotional Use Only, her first ever independent release, she loses her longtime shield and with it comes a revamped sound: flexes over ballroom house, glam club, and sultry reggae. “Brooklyn, I’m fresh back,” she announces on opener “passenger 47.” On “famous,” her flow almost sings as she meanders through lyrical bars like “Chitty Bang Chitty Bang / Champagne spilling on my woodgrain.” She still paints as vivid pictures as ever as on “sandhills,” on which she details a biblical night journey to a mountain cave as a metaphor for personal obstacles. As her first record in three years, it’s clear from her lyrics she’s been anxious about her return. For Promotional Use Only is a reminder of what she’s always been great at, with just enough newness to chew on. — Steffanee Wang

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music

The fourth album from frontier guitarist Mary Halvorson and her Amaryllis sextet comprises eight tracks that move according to their own internal logic. Halvorson’s compositions give her players plenty of room to stretch out, but they always manage to create disorienting confluences, knotty thickets of sounds that tumble over each other but never fall flat. On most of About Ghosts’ tracks, she clutters the mix with even more layers — most notably two saxophonists and a Pocket Piano synthesizer gifted to her by a friend — but even these extra elements fit themselves slickly into unseen air pockets. Still, Halvorson’s guitar, a flickering entity that often hides amid the chaos, is the secret star of the whole dynamic dance. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

gyrofield first came across my radar as a drum and bass futurist, an advocate for how developing its sonic features could lead to a unique and perhaps utopian expression: “I wanted to channel something that was slightly novel and unfamiliar with drum and bass, but still very close to people’s lives,” they told me of their 2024 EP These Heavens, “expressing love, longing, [and] the beauty of the universe.” The producer’s latest EP takes this philosophy even further, contorting their sound into four bold new forms. There’s the spectral and jazzy opener “Vegetation Grows Thick,” laced with with crackling electronica, that leads into the psychedelic techno militance of “Bolete.” Flo State examines the emotional and physical topography of the natural word on the stuttering “Rorschach,” before “Brinjal” takes things home with jazzy IDM inspired signatures. All told, it’s more exciting music from one of electro’s hungriest, most curious artists. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp