A Lonely Sinner is a masterfully grafted oddity. It’s hard to know where the samples end and the instruments begin. It’s part folk, part pop, part drone-metal, all the while retaining a sense of synergy that should be impossible given the circumstances.

The music industry has come a long way since the early days of studio production. The hallowed recording studio was once a mythical place, only accessible to those deemed worthy. During the early part of the 20th Century if you found yourself in the privileged position of “laying down a track” then it meant that fat-cat studio executives thought you had what it takes, or more specifically, you would line their pockets with gold. Such was the clinical, almost sterile, nature of the recording studio that recording technicians were required to wear lab coats as they operated strange new pieces of futuristic equipment that wouldn’t look out of place in a nuclear power station. The line was clear - musicians on one side of the glass, producers on the other. 

Of course, over the years this divide has been completely obliterated. Recording equipment is accessible to all. Imagine trying to explain to those lab-coat-wearing poindexters of yesteryear that in the future anybody would be able to record an album from the comfort of their bedroom and make it available to billions of people at the click of a button. 

Of course, the recording studio hasn’t become redundant by any means, and yet when you hear something as grandiose and glorious as Brazilian multi-instrumentalist samlrc’s latest album, A Lonely Sinner, it kind of makes you wonder why that is. 

According to her BandCamp, samlrc primarily employs a BM-800 microphone and a BMG22 audio interface, alongside a variety of instruments like guitars, harmonicas, flutes, tambourines and even soda cans. Her creative process often includes samples of the artists she loves. Bjork, Swans, Merzbow, the Silent Hill 2 and the Princess Mononoke soundtrack are all credited. She then masterfully blends these elements into something that is not only epic in scale but also deeply personal.

A Lonely Sinner is eight tracks of gloriously realised avant-garde soundscapes. An album that is rooted in earthy folk ideals, but occasionally flowers into a distortion-drenched colossus. 

Or to look at it from an entirely different angle, as the samlrc herself puts it - “it’s an album about a sheep experiencing love in its nature.” 

You will never look at our woolly four-legged friends in the same way. 

Appropriately enough, A Lonely Sinner opens with Lamb Theme, a two-minute ambient instrumental, complete with the wavering bleating of sheep. It ends abruptly and we are plunged into the wistful meditations of Philautia (A Greek word for self-love), a gentle folk song, drenched in a myriad of sonic textures. Just after the midway point, the slow building of tension starts to pay off. Drums pound as acoustic guitars slowly give way to a tidal wave of distortion. 

Sinner plays the same hand, only bigger, louder and even better before Flowerfields flutters melodically over the ferocious heft of the previous two tracks. Storge provides another epic soundscape, this time darker and more demonic, delving us even further into drone-metal territory. It’s around this point that you start to forget samlrc is a 20-year-old Brazilian bedroom-producer and not a seasoned death-metal band. It’s impressive stuff, especially considering the next track Sheep Theme somehow shifts into more pop/indie territory without you even noticing. Quite a feat. 

For M. begins as a softly played folk lullaby and ends as a rousing indie-driven violin concerto. The Beauty of the Present Moment concludes the album as it began, in deep reflection and trance-like meditation. A Lonely Sinner is a masterfully grafted oddity. It’s hard to know where the samples end and the instruments begin. It’s part folk, part pop, part drone-metal, all the while retaining a sense of synergy that should be impossible given the circumstances.

However, it never falters in its vision. samlrc is an artist who is making the music they want to make in the way they want to make it. The fact that this album exists and is finding its audience is a testament to modern recording techniques. And in a world where most technological advancements seem to be crushing our creative spirit, I’d say that’s a bloody good thing.