8/10

Across her new album 'Gravity', Finnish multi-disciplinary artist Conchis builds a stark, highly cohesive record around illness, endurance, collapse and the difficult process of adapting to a life that no longer follows its expected path. Written during a severe ME/CFS crash, the album was first composed almost entirely in her head before she was physically able to return to her instruments or recording tools.

Throughout, thee music often feels suspended between effort and surrender. Beats land with real weight, while synths, guitars and layered electronic textures create an atmosphere that can be tense, fragile and strangely spacious all at once. Her shimmering voice sits at the centre of that world, intimate but resilient, often sounding as though it's pushing through the production as it plays.

The opening track 'Beginnings' is one of the album's strongest moments. There's this understated power in the way it approaches the idea of starting again. Rather than presenting recovery as a dramatic breakthrough, the song captures the uncertainty of trying to move forward when progress itself feels unreliable. Its hesitant momentum makes the title especially effective; showing us that this is not a triumphant new beginning, but simply the possibility of one.

The previously shared 'Streetlights' circles the repetitive pull of a toxic relationship through buzzing synths and layered percussion, while 'Under Your Feathers' brings more light into the album with hopeful arpeggios and expansive pads. Then 'Battleground' turns exhaustion into something heavier and more grinding, and 'It Will Only Hurt Once' uses restless bass and sharp percussion to confront the necessity of ending what has already begun to decay.

The later tracks then push the album into even more uncertain territory. 'Ether in the Atmosphere' considers mortality and what may exist beyond the body, while 'Kicking and Screaming' tightens around anxiety without relying on an obvious explosion. By the time the closing title-track arrives, the imagery of weight and gravity has started to break apart entirely.

But this is not a record about overcoming adversity in any simple sense. Here, Conchis explores what happens when endurance itself changes shape, when fighting is no longer always the answer and letting go becomes part of survival.

'Gravity' doesn't seek to rise above what happened, but it does learn how to live inside the altered weight of it.