Kirin McElwain – "Youth"
"Bringing the Ethereal Into Conversation With the Harsh"
Kirin McElwain's debut album, "Youth," will be released through AKP Recordings on October 10th. The seven songs demand your attention, inviting you to fully immerse yourself in the music. Upon listening to the two pre-released tracks, "Closer" and "Youth," you'll find yourself drawn to this music, allowing it to resonate with you and reflect the complex shadows of your own past, struggles, and contradictions.
Kirin, a classically trained cellist who has spent years between Brooklyn and Stockholm, has crafted a piece of sound art that feels deeply personal yet startlingly universal. Across seven pieces, she weaved together the tactile warmth of cello with the unruly, at times abrasive world of modular synthesis. The result is an album that is unafraid of harshness but equally committed to moments of startling tenderness. The press release calls it "a meditation on coming to terms with our desires and shame", and it couldn't be described more precisely. If this came to your mind, please don't mistake this for something overly intellectual. "Youth" is a record to be lived, embodied, and deeply felt. One of Kirin McElwain's own reflections on this album strikes directly at its core:
"The juxtaposition of the ethereal with the harsh in this music is the result of getting very different parts of myself into conversation with each other … I'm grateful to be able to express myself on my instrument, but my work with electronics has been a source of joy and liberation that has helped me evolve that relationship."
That sense of dialogue—between fragility and force, between tradition and experimentation—runs like a thread through "Youth".
The First Glimpse: "Closer"
Some of you may have encountered the lead single, "Closer", which Kirin released on August 20th, together with a video. When I put my headphones on and listened to it for the first time, it felt like the city outside the window just stopped for a moment. As if I stepped into the song and listened to it from the inside. "Closer" didn't unfold politely, like so many songs do. Instead, it grows, develops, and stumbles between fragility and noise. Kirin's cello drifts in as though it had been overheard from another room, before modular synths rise up like an electrical storm. It's experimental drone sounds at its best, but in a neoclassical, noisy way, and I like that a lot! It gives me goosebumps every time I step back into it.
Kirin explains the visuals in her video for the piece as exploring "the often fragile boundary between moving swiftly towards what we want most and the ease of staying put as an observer of—but never an active participant in—our desire." Shot at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and from the back of a bicycle weaving through Brooklyn traffic, the imagery mirrors the sonic push and pull of the track: movement and hesitation, longing and stasis.
Chris King, who directed and processed the footage, built the video through layers of analog film, CRT distortion, and digital interference. Every frame of the clip bears the imprint of imperfection with its individual grain, decay, and glitch. Just as McElwain's cello struggles to emerge from the crackle of modular synthesis, so too do the images struggle to resolve into something whole. The song and the video are about the difficulty of moving forward, of pushing ourselves past observation and into participation.
Let me stress something here: "Closer" is not simply an introduction to Kirin's first official full-length album. It is more of an intentional statement telling you, before anything else, this music is not going to comfort you in the usual sense. You will not be handed any easy resolutions. Instead, it will demand that you sit inside the friction you sense, while feeling how fragile and precarious our boundaries really are.
Kirin McElwain – "Closer"
"Youth" – The title track
From September 17th, you can listen to the second single: the title track "Youth". Chris King made another video for this song, which feels like the emotional heart of the album. While "Closer" is restless, nervy, full of energy barely contained, "Youth" is more contemplative and haunted.
It's almost impossible to listen to "Youth" without reflecting on the very word itself. What does "Youth" mean to you? Nostalgia? Regret? Longing? Liberation? McElwain's composition holds all of these. Her cello lines are drawn out, aching, almost prayer-like, but the electronics rumble underneath, threatening to fracture that delicate surface.
Kris' video underscores this duality by once again letting analog imperfection dominate the visuals. Flickering CRT feedback, fragments that dissolve as soon as you try to focus on them. Watching it for the first time, I thought of memory itself: how youth is always refracted, always mediated, never as clear as we pretend it was. Even after watching it multiple times, it left me unsettled. And that could be the point. After all, Youth—our own or anyone's—is never stable. It is both too close and forever out of reach.
Here's why you need to listen to "Youth" by Kirin McElwain
While the first two singles set the tone, the whole album contains so much more. It's seven very personal songs in which Kirin explores themes such as desire, youth, and many more. You can definitely look forward to the release and diving into her sound.
Besides Kirin's well-done combination of classical technique with modular synthesis, what makes this album so remarkable is the artist's willingness to turn towards discomfort. And this is exactly what differentiates those seven songs from other music within her genre. Her songs don't become too abrasive or too polished, and they never lose their edges. You want to stay and continue consuming it, even if it doesn't provide constant comfort.
It wakes you up and hurts you. Not in a destructive way, but how looking into a mirror can hurt when you don't want to see yourself clearly right now. Listening to "Youth" pulls you back into your younger days, your own feelings, and your own restless attempts to move closer to something you couldn't even name back then. And it reminds you how much of that still lingers, even decades later.
Kirin McElwain describes this tension like this:
"By continuing to turn towards the uncomfortable, I hold up a mirror to both my practice and myself in a way that feels patently honest."
I think this is what makes the album so difficult to shake off. I can't predict if you'll feel the same. Those songs may touch a different nerve for you, but I'm sure they won't leave you untouched.
"Youth" is an outstanding record
In a year already heavy with remarkable experimental releases, Kirin McElwain's "Youth" stands out. Her music is necessary, and her ability to hold opposites—tenderness and noise, desire and shame, clarity and distortion—is inspiring.
So, when October 10th arrives, I urge you not to just stream this in the background. Give it your attention, your time, and your vulnerability. Let this record unsettle you. Watch the videos, and notice how they shift each time. "Youth" is a confrontation, a meditation, and a mirror, and quite the opposite of background music. "Youth" is an album that asks you to listen closely, to notice the details and contrasts. It may not offer easy answers, but it leaves a lasting impression, one that stays with you long after the music has ended.
