From those gleaming, iridescent first notes of Bottom of The Pool, the sound of change hangs in the air.

Whilst on hiatus in between NewDad records, frontwoman Julie Dawson tapped into a longing to create something wholly different from her routine formula. Coloured by these overlapping shades, her debut solo album Bottom of The Pool is about freedom from and of the self, escapism and the flush of new beginnings. None of these are new themes for Dawson, but she’s never explored them quite like this.

Enlisting Jack Hamill’s (aka Space Dimension Controller) production chops, Bottom of The Pool is an immediately arresting work. Its sound is both an acid and alkali, as though it could fizz up and melt in your hands. At the confluence of strings and wires, pedals and programming, the title track opens the record with a masterful thesis, as Dawson sings: “I wish I could be somewhere in the middle, somewhere I can dwindle away”.

There’s a tension between detachment and lucidity throughout the 8 tracks. On ‘I Get Lost In This House’ and ‘Hailee’, Dawson sounds as though she’s singing from another room, biding quietly beneath the ranges of idiosyncratic arrangements. ‘Silly Little Song’ is painted with the choppy brushstrokes of Imogen Heap, the sparse sonic undercurrents accent the singer’s gauze-like vocals and place them at ear-level.

To call this a merely “electronic” album would be underhanded, but its plugged-in atmosphere reflects a mission to make art that’s less reliant on tradition and invests, instead, in the sublimity of the present moment. Trading on pre-forged pathways — it’s no way to grow as an artist. With an otherworldly ambiance and wired sonics, Bottom of The Pool is a hypnotic, cuttingly-crafted album that cements Julie Dawson as a staggering artist who defies easy categorisation.

8.5/10