Album Review : Cù Sìth - Lyke Way (2026)
The older I get, the more I embrace the pleasure of being clueless. It's a form of renewed innocence. Somewhere in your thirties, you get a jolt of dopamine from finally the go-to guy. The one who knows stuff. But the weight of this responsibility wears thin. Unlike losing yourself in something new and different, which never gets old. Cù Sìth is the seemingly new project from British-Canadian producer and powerviolence legend Andrew Nolan and its definitely new and different.
His tape Lyke Way is, for lack of a better term, the sound of nothingness coming into existence.
There's little information about Lyke Way outside the fact that it features seven tracks all named Lyke Way and that it's about nineteen minutes worth of music. Nolan described it on his Substack as "approaches to sound that don’t require planning or participation in the modern circus of release schedules". In other words, it's something new, different and spontaneous. It's also quite simple. It's like a pulse taking a life of its own or an EKG being possessed by a malevolent spirit. Depending on how you choose to see it.
It's not use going over the album track-by-track because it is essentially an in-depth exploration of one idea. Each one runs through a different layer of sound stretched through time, therefore given movement. I had no doubt that Nolan did this only to see what would happen, but the interest of such recording lies (in my opinion) in how it is received. Never the one to make noise for the sake of making noise, there's an inescapable poetry to whatever Andrew Nolan puts his mind to.
In that sense, Lyke Way philosophically fits latest project Sacrifice and the Monochrome mixtapes as the soundtrack to a world collapsing in real time, but this is considerably more primal. This is not the sound of the cosmic indifference of nature or the signs of life in a dying world. It’s the apocalypse being broadcasted live. The sweeping majesty of overpowering forces trudging along and flattening any nuance in its sight. It has a Lovecraftian appeal in the sense that it’s sound overwriting reality.
Now, I'm sure this isn't part of a grand artistic plan. But this is why Nolan's music is so interesting to me: it communicates something about the essence of its creator. It's not a product, it's self-expression at its finest. He creates alternate realities with and for sound. He’s half-audio scientist, half-artist. That’s why his fascination with the logical end (and the new beginnings) of sound transpires in such an apocalyptic way on his recordings. He lets sound exist in a way that's indifferent to human appreciation.
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Obviously, I'm not going to convince you to listen to Lyke Way. You’ve taken that decision already and my opinions have nothing to do with it. Andrew Nolan makes the kind of music you either gravitate towards or don’t. This new project might be the most feral and boundless incarnation of his recording philosophy, though. It’s the closest I’ve ever heard him from making harsh noise without making harsh noise. Because whatever he makes is always unambiguously his.
7.5/10
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