If there’s one thing Los Angeles-based musician and creative technologist August Kamp knows, it’s how to make electronic pop feel like something alive. Her latest single, ‘Un(familia)rity’, follows the groove-driven shimmer of Sugarize but dives even deeper, a track that’s part introspection, part sonic experiment, and wholly captivating.
Kamp, a trans artist whose work straddles sound, tech, and visual art, records from her tiny off-grid studio nestled in a botanical garden. It’s a space filled with humming machines, vintage encyclopedias, and Polaroids of imagined worlds, the perfect reflection of her ethos: that nature and technology aren’t opposing forces, but mirrors of the same living system.
On Un(familia)rity, she layers organic textures with algorithmic sounds, crafting what she playfully calls a “book of I-Spy for your ears.” The track unfolds like synthetic nostalgia, glimmering synths, harmonies that feel both intimate and uncanny, but at its heart is a raw sincerity that keeps you tethered even as the sounds drift into the experimental.
“It’s a song about humanity and our desire to understand each other and be understood by each other. And it’s ultimately about the machines that we created and how they could bring us together, and they often do bring us together, but that they also very often serve to keep us apart.”
This single is the latest chapter in a discography spanning six years, four EPs, and ten albums, and it sets the stage for her upcoming full-length project, reconnecting.everything, dropping November 7th. With Un(familia)rity, August Kamp proves once again that she’s not just experimenting with sound, she’s redefining what modern electronic music can feel like.
