Olivia Brown’s "man rm -ir" is a Glitch-Pop exorcism of heartbreak & healing
In a digital world saturated with pristine pop perfection and algorithm-friendly hooks, Olivia Brown emerges as a defiant outlier — an artist more concerned with sculpting feeling than following formula. On her latest 3-song EP man rm -ir, Brown plunges headfirst into the raw, unfiltered murk of heartbreak, trauma, and the uneasy crawl toward healing. Clocking in at just over eleven and a half minutes, it’s a concise yet deeply immersive experience — a fever dream of glitchy textures, warped vocals, and haunted beauty that blurs the line between experimental pop and avant-garde electronic music.
From the first distorted pulse of opener “44 w vine”, Olivia Brown announces that she’s not here to play it safe. The track’s opening moments feel like eavesdropping on a broken transmission, Brown’s ghostly, layered vocals bleeding through shimmering pads and jagged, manipulated samples. There’s a certain push-pull to the arrangement — moments of airy melody clash with industrial grit — creating an intoxicating tension. It’s glitchy, yes, but never alienating. Brown’s ability to wring raw human emotion out of sonic abstraction is nothing short of remarkable.
“anguish” takes that unease and turns it inward. It’s the EP’s emotional epicenter — a track that moves like a wave of pent-up grief threatening to collapse under its own weight. Vocals drift in and out like half-remembered conversations, punctuated by warped vocal chops and cascading synth lines that mimic the sensation of trying to catch your breath through a panic attack. It’s visceral, deeply personal, and yet universal in the way all heartbreak songs secretly are. Olivia doesn't need conventional lyrics to articulate pain; every sound choice feels like a jagged shard of her psyche, meticulously arranged but never over-polished.
The closing track, “window8.6”, offers a kind of fractured peace. The production remains intricate and experimental, but there’s a warmth here that wasn’t present in the opening two tracks. Brown’s vocals float atop a bed of flickering arpeggios and subtly shifting pads, evoking the fragile clarity that comes in the aftermath of emotional devastation. It’s as if the EP’s glitchy, chaotic world is slowly reassembling itself into something new, something livable. The track feels like both an ending and a beginning, a fitting conclusion to this short but emotionally loaded arc.
What makes man rm -ir so compelling is its seamless fusion of experimental sound design with deeply personal storytelling. Olivia Brown isn’t content to simply experiment for experiment’s sake — every warbled vocal and syncopated synth hit serves the EP’s overarching narrative of collapse and recovery. And yet, despite its heavy themes and experimental leanings, there’s an accessibility here, an instinct for pop melody and structure that keeps the listener tethered through the sonic storm.
With man rm -ir, Olivia Brown continues to prove herself as one of the most exciting voices in the alt-electronic pop space. It’s a record that demands your attention, rewarding repeated listens with new details and emotional resonance each time. Heartbreak never sounded so beautiful, so broken, and so defiantly alive.
If anything, we wish there was more! However for now, we urge everyone out there to take a moment to immerse yourselves into the listen, follow along for more, and of course to stay tuned for everything else in the works.
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