First things first: yes, Chanel Beads’ second album, Your Day Will Come, has the same title as the experimental project’s 2024 breakthrough debut. But this is a completely new body of work, not a “part two,” a rehash or a re-do. If his initial impulse was to poke fun at the apparatus that divides music into chapters, as the songs developed, Shane Lavers found the phrase carried deeper nuance, evoking the duel between certainty and doubt that preoccupied his psyche. Though the phrase unfurls with conviction, a slight shift in emphasis can inspire unsettling ambiguities: Will your day come? What will it be like? How can you be sure?  Raised in the suburbs of Minnesota, Lavers began making music under the name Chanel Beads while living in Seattle back in 2016. When he wasn’t working at a library for the blind, he was collaging synthetic sounds and real instruments into beguiling songs fundamentally averse to genre. He was living in New York by 2022, as tracks like “Ef” and “True Altruism” captivated certain online circles with their androgynous vocals, uncanny artifice, and stirring intimacy. In the years since Chanel Beads’ entrancing introduction, the project has gone from playing house shows and illegal abandoned train tunnel shows, all the way up to supporting Lorde on her recent North American arena tour. Though the stages have grown larger, the spirit of Chanel Beads remains steadfastly underground. Lavers made Your Day Will Come at his small and sparsely furnished Brooklyn studio, with the speakers positioned so close to his face that he could feel air emit from every thump of the kick drum. He embraces the attitude of “if it works, leave it be,” recording into whatever microphone is around and going off that version. “We start the recording before the song is written, and then you work the song into the recording,” Lavers says. “We don’t make demos, that's a hard and fast rule. Which we’ll break eventually.” Lavers’ fragmented lyrics are full of open-ended questions, exploring the dichotomies that inform our reality. He was particularly consumed by the coexistence of nihilism and love, saying, “It feels as if one should obliterate the other, but they don't.” Emotional sublimation is central to Chanel Beads, as if you can white-knuckle something so hard that it becomes transcendent. Drawing from Lavers’ own experiences, Your Day Will Come uses dream logic to delve into liminality and precarious remembrance. It’s colored by the spectres of specific losses, but also how you can haunt yourself by falling back into old habits.

Anyone familiar with electronic music will know Mechatok, aka Emir Timur Tokdemir. He made his name touring globally and releasing a series of records and collaborations with some of the most forward-thinking artists of the past decade, from Drain Gang (Bladee, Ecco2k, Whitearmor, Thaiboy Digital) to Charli XCX to Lorenzo Senni. Often subtle in delivery, these works circulated widely across underground and adjacent mainstream scenes, subtly shaping the direction of experimental pop and club music. Tokdemir treats Mechatok as a kind of fictionalization experiment—an avatar that allows him to explore new facets of himself and brings a sense of openness and freedom to the creative process. He cites artists like Daft Punk and Gorillaz as inspirations: timeless figures who turned the concept of the artistic project itself into an artwork. After years of honing his sound as Mechatok, Tokdemir is stepping up to share Wide Awake, his kaleidoscopic debut solo album. The record crystallizes a journey that is entirely his own, establishing Mechatok not just as a standout collaborator, but as an undeniable solo artist fully in command of his vision. Through the Mechatok persona, he accesses forms of expression that feel paradoxically more intimate - and more timeless. Everything on Wide Awake is tied together by a playful yet deeply intuitive sonic palette and a set of core, haiku-like lyrical themes. The album poses questions about the possibility of authenticity and the status of self-expression in the context of algorithmic flattening. Mechatok declines to propose utopian solutions and chooses instead to live with strange ambiguities, tapping their generative potential. Featuring Bladee, Ecco2k, Isabella Lovestory, Tohji, and others, Wide Awake spans a wide emotional and stylistic spectrum while remaining filtered through Tokdemir’s precise vision. The result shines as a meticulously crafted electronic pop opus; a collection of addictive, personal mantras, fragments that feel at once fleeting and enduring.

New Jersey born, Queens based artist Car Culture, the alias of Daniel Fisher (also known as Physical Therapy), announces the extended version of his 2025 album Rest Here, which arrived via cult-favorite Montreal label NAFF Recordings. Alongside the announcement, Fisher shares the Physical Therapy remix of “Doesn’t Really Matter” featuring Squirrel Flower. Following the release of his sophomore album, Rest Here, Car Culture returns with an extended version of the album for CD, streaming, and a limited edition marble vinyl repress. After immediately receiving much critical acclaim and selling out in all physical formats, NAFF and Fisher teamed up to re-release the album with new remixes, demo versions, and tracks previously only available on the earlier Nothingburger EP.  Fisher steps up under his other alias to provide a dancefloor version of the album single “Doesn’t Really Matter,” honing in on the tracks earworm melodies and fortifying its breakbeats. Also included are demo versions of some of the album tracks to provide a window into the early stages of the Fisher’s writing process. Exemplifying Fisher’s wide ranging approach to production, Rest Here plays like a well-worn mixtape: ranging from fuzzy dream pop to hypnotic downtempo. The album represents an evolution for Fisher, known for his long and winding discography of dance music releases; while earlier works often touched on the emotive and melodic, Rest Here moves firmly into songwriting territory, with the addition of live instrumentation and a focus on vocals. Fisher has always approached his projects with a talent for world-building and on Rest Here, he constructs something tender and captivating.  Constructed over the course of 3 years between New York and Montreal alongside a cast of collaborators – mainly long-time friend Patrick Holland – layers of guitars, drums and samples come together to build a heartsick wall of sound. These emotionally and sonically dense songs inhabit a familiar place for Fisher, somewhere between brain-rotted cognitive dissonance and tear jerking sentimentality. Warm psychedelic shoe-wave primed for emotional projection. Rest Here features Fisher’s own vocals as well as Chicago’s Squirrel Flower and London’s Ms Ray. The project also includes contributions from NAFF label co-founder Priori, and New York’s J. Albert. The album was mixed by Patrick Holland and mastered by Matt Colton and Patrick Holland. Cover Photo by Ganem Haiek with artwork and design by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier.  Over the course of the last 15 years, Fisher has had a prolific, zig-zagging career, releasing genre-agnostic music under a number of aliases, often on his own Allergy Season label. From his first EP on the ground breaking label Hippos In Tanks, Fisher has continually created surprising, playful electronic music. Through his DJ sets around the globe and his long running NTS Radio show, Fisher manages to weave these many threads together. As Car Culture, Fisher brings focus to his sentimental side. In the fan-favorite Remissions mix series, he collages fuzzy folktronica, found sounds and unexpected edits into foot-gazing narratives. His productions as Car Culture are sometimes serene, sometimes heart wrenching. Zoom out and you hear tranquilizing electronica, zoom in and you find soulful songwriting. Fisher released his first LP as Car Culture, Dead Rock, in 2021, referred to by Resident Advisor as “[one of] the great ambient records to emerge from the Brooklyn-Queens techno scene.” Over the last year, Fisher began performing his first live sets as Car Culture, playing bass, and mixing his own singing and spoken word with samples. The band also features Taryn Blake Miller on guitar and background vocals. Performing across the US, Europe & UK, they bring the surreal analog and digital sounds from Car Culture’s albums into the real.