BJ Holy - Broken Horns (2025)

An elegiac suspension through city landscapes in decay, weeds growing through vandalised ruins and fallen grandeur, BJ Holy’s debut album ‘Broken Horns’ offers an effusive take on endings, heartache and rebirth. Embracing solitude, rebuilding and the presence of what remains in the wake, euphoric beats tug below broody distillations of folkloric references and flugelhorn.

Opening with ‘Lowlanding’, a rework of sea shanty ballad ‘Lowlands’, the album blurs deeper and deeper into evocations of desire and ecstatic release. ‘Xo xo’ bids goodbye to broken hearts, whilst ‘Clean slate’ emerges as an airy counterpart to the subterranean emotional depths of ‘Earth sign’ (co-written with Virginia Waters). ‘DJ and I’m dancing’ is an angsty, industrial rumination on the alienating rotations of London’s side hustles. The album closes with ‘Anchored in love’, featuring Glasgow-based musician & choreographer, Magnus Westwell on strings. Returning again and again to a feeling of being fixed in romance through its cyclical, repetitive, looping composition, BJ Holy ushers in a hopeful glimpse of something new.