You can hear and share OSMIUM 1 now — the first taste of what’s coming.
The wait is over: experimental powerhouse OSMIUM have officially announced their debut album, dropping June 20th on Geoff Barrow’s Invada Records. Alongside the announcement, they’ve unleashed a brand new single, OSMIUM 1, and it’s a wild one.
If you’ve been following their journey since their debut live set at Unsound, you already know this crew is stacked. We’ve got Hildur Guðnadóttir, the Oscar-winning Icelandic composer whose resume reads like a who’s-who of experimental royalty (Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Sunn O))), Fennesz… plus those tiny projects Chernobyl and Tár). Joining her is James Ginzburg, co-founder of Emptyset and Subtext Recordings; Rully Shabara, the hypnotic voice behind Senyawa; and Sam Slater, Grammy-winning producer and sound sorcerer.
Together, OSMIUM don’t just make music — they forge it. Expect a molten brew of electroacoustic textures, metallic drones, jagged rhythms, and raw, unfiltered human-machine hybrid vocals. This isn’t a record trying to paint some sterile future — it’s more like watching the past, present, and future melt into each other in real time.
While genres are nodded at — folk, doom metal, minimalism, industrial, extreme noise — nothing stays bolted down. The sound shapeshifts, just like the questions the group wrestles with: humans vs. machines, tradition vs. progression, the solo voice vs. the collective.
Fun fact:
- Hildur plays a halldorophone (think: cello on a mind-bending feedback loop).
- Sam’s smashing rhythms out of a self-built, self-oscillating drum machine.
- James pulls cavernous bass sounds from a custom instrument inspired by ancient resonators.
- And Rully? Rully’s voice is his instrument — bending and breaking into sounds that barely feel human.
All of it is tied together by a custom-built robotic system that keeps the whole chaotic storm moving. And even though Rully’s only using his voice, his otherworldly techniques have been so intense, scientists back in Indonesia have actually studied him.
The first peek into this sonic world, OSMIUM 1, feels like standing at the edge of a black hole, listening to it breathe. Shabara’s raw, guttural sounds rip across layers of industrial distortion and mechanical pulse, eventually sliding into a brooding, ominous slowdown that lingers long after the last beat.
Speaking about recording the track, Sam Slater says: “When we recorded this track, Rully was completely in a trance — he went somewhere and then came back. Likewise when we play this track live, every time I look up from the drums I see the audience totally locked in to Rully, pushed and pulled by the waves and intensity.”
This isn’t about perfect polish or trendy production tricks — it’s real, risky, and deeply human. OSMIUM have found their own crooked symmetry, locked in a dance between machine and flesh.
‘OSMIUM’ track list
1) Osmium 0
2) Osmium 1
3) Osmium 2
4) Osmium 3
5) Osmium 4
6) Osmium 5
7) Osmium 6
8) Osmium 7
The debut album ‘OSMIUM’ arrives June 20th via Invada Records.
Pre-order it now and prepare for impact.
OSMIUM are:
- Hildur Guðnadóttir – Halldorophone
- Rully Shabara – Vocals
- Sam Slater – Feedback Percussion
- James Ginzburg – Bass Monochord
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