In the hit-averse hinterland of experimental music, there are two categories: the forbiddingly difficult and the surprisingly seductive. L’Rain (nom de plume of American songwriter Taja Cheek) falls into the latter category, and I Killed Your Dog (2023) is maybe her most accessible work yet. The Brooklynite’s soulful tones (imagine Solange without the plaintive angst) combine with a woozy obfuscation of funk, indie, syncopated drums and swirling electronics to create a barrelling liminal space between freewheeling wildness and controlled chaos.

Steering the avant-garde towards a more uncomplicatedly beautiful direction is the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s IBM 1401, A User’s Manual (2006). Here temperatures clash with the spark of iron pyrites smashing together, the sterile coldness of the information age (including a narrator drily reciting a printer assembly instruction manual on ‘Part 2/IBM 1403 Printer’) interloping with the warming passion of the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra in full flow. Plenty of musicians have merged these opposites, but few have achieved such soaring beauty. 

Other I listens: I Can Hear Your Heart by Aidan John Moffat (2004), Illadelph Halflife by The Roots (1996), I Am Kurious Oranj by The Fall (1988).