One of several aliases for the musical output of visual artist Kai Althoff. He may be best known for leading the avant-rock group Workshop for many years, or for a series of confounding solo albums under the name Fanal. To understand Pry, follow that logic, and allow yourself to be further confounded. It’s a hard album accurately to parse, with drum machines left to burble and stumble over ascending-descending keyboard patterns, vampy drones, wistful and mysterious wind instruments, ghostly non-pop songs, and Althoff’s fey, yet performatively dramatic voice floating amidst it all. There are some umbilicals, maybe, to hypnagogic pop, Hype Williams, that kind of thing, but Althoff does something very different – very unique, slightly unsettling, endlessly compelling – with similar source material. Short of a miracle, this is my album of 2023.