8/10

Some projects announce themselves with volume. But CS Hellmann’s 'In My Head' does the opposite as it pulls you in with a kind of magnetic quiet. This two-track EP from the Nashville outsider craftsman marks a seismic moment in their artistic evolution, as the sound of someone finally stepping into the atmosphere they were always meant to inhabit.

Recorded at Polychrome Ranch, a studio tucked so deep in the woods it feels like a creative hideout, 'In My Head' is drenched in ambience, tension, and the rich, filmic production of long-time collaborator Jared Corder. The pair have spent years refining a musical language together, and here it clicks into place.

'Love I Left Behind' is the EP’s emotional epicentre, offering a confession wrapped in industrial pulse and haunted guitar drones. You can hear the reckoning in Hellmann’s delivery, low and worn, but never resigned. The drums breathe with human irregularity, the Ebow lines slice through like apparitions, and the song swells with the weight of someone finally naming the thing they’ve been running from. It’s stark. It’s wounded. And it’s electrifying.

While the opening title-track 'In My Head delivers a more inward look. Hellmann trades grit for introspective shimmer, building a soundscape that feels both nostalgic and futuristic. It’s uncanny in the most beautiful way, as though two selves are singing to each other across a divide neither can fully cross.

But what makes In My Head so compelling is how vividly it hints at the next chapter. You can feel the urgency, the sharpening of vision, and the sense that these tracks are the threshold to something bigger and bolder. As bookends of a collaborative era with Corder, they mark both a before and an after.

CS Hellmann has always existed just to the left of genre, but with 'In My Head', they’ve carved out a space that is entirely their own, delivering moody, cinematic alt-darkwave threaded with honesty sharp enough to cut through the noise.