Marcel Sletten - Plastic Jazz (2026)

Marcel Sletten's eighth album is his most straightforward, stylistically cohesive release since 2021's Vicious Kisses. Inspired by Thousand Knives-era Ryuichi Sakamoto and experimental luthier Hans Reichel, the material on Plastic Jazz is electric like neon, densely layered, and '80s-obsessed. Samples of guitars and synths are chopped and screwed into intricate collages that land somewhere between avant-pop and sound art. It's Sletten's first album to utilize the sounds of Korg's MS-20 and Wavestation synths, which were emulated with VSTs and used quite liberally.

If Vicious Kisses was Sletten's love letter to '80s synthpop, Plastic Jazz represents his total deconstruction of the style. Equal parts ambient and beat-driven, the album sways between new age ("Asheville Honey," "Perpetual Myrrh") and IDM elements ("Data Erasure," "Viridian") in a tongue-in-cheek manner. It's the latest evolution of Sletten's unpredictable sound.