Index For Working Musik

Index for Working Musik crafts a somber strain of neo-psychedelia that fuses introspective verses, warped electronics, and unhurried yet occasionally abrasive guitar textures into something ominous and unsettling. Their first album, Dragging the Needlework for the Kids at Uphole, issued in 2023, conceals the group’s distinguished history across indie rock and electronic music.

The project originated when Max Oscarnold and Nathalia Bruno began collaborating in 2019. Bruno had previously issued electronic material under the alias DRIFT, while Oscarnold had pursued several strands of indie rock through his tenures in the Proper Ornaments and TOY. The pair converged on a hybrid palette drawn from both backgrounds; with drummer Bobby Voltaire, who had also performed in the Proper Ornaments, guitarist J. Loftus, and bassist Edgar Smith rounding out the lineup, they shaped songs built on precise rhythmic pulses, ringing guitar figures, blurred manipulations of found audio, and subdued vocals. The words themselves often stemmed from automatic writing sessions, giving Dragging the Needlework for the Kids at Uphole its diffuse, nearly spontaneous character when Tough Love released it in early 2023.