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**Yeule - Glitch Princess**
★★★★☆

In the liminal spaces between dreams and digital decay, where broken code meets broken hearts, Yeule has carved out a singular niche that feels both ancient and impossibly futuristic. The Singaporean-born, London-based artist's third full-length, *Glitch Princess*, arrives as their most cohesive statement yet—a shimmering meditation on identity, technology, and the strange comfort found in malfunction.

Following the raw vulnerability of 2022's *Softscars*, which saw Yeule grappling with themes of self-harm and healing through a more guitar-driven approach, *Glitch Princess* represents something of a homecoming. Here, they return to the ethereal electronic soundscapes that first captivated listeners on early releases, but with a newfound confidence and clarity of vision. The album feels like the culmination of years spent navigating the intersection of human emotion and digital expression, where glitches aren't errors to be corrected but beautiful accidents to be embraced.

The opening title track sets the tone with its gossamer synths and Yeule's characteristically whispered vocals, which seem to float through the mix like data packets searching for their destination. It's a sound that recalls the ambient works of Tim Hecker or Grouper, but filtered through a distinctly Gen-Z sensibility that finds poetry in pixelated breakdown. "My name is Glitch Princess," they intone over cascading arpeggios, "I live inside your screen"—a declaration that feels both playful and profoundly lonely.

*Glitch Princess* excels in its quieter moments, where Yeule's gift for creating immersive sonic environments truly shines. "Cyber Pet" unfolds like a lullaby for artificial intelligence, its music box melodies gradually consumed by static and distortion until you're not sure whether you're listening to a song or witnessing the death of a digital pet. Meanwhile, "Dazies" builds from barely-there whispers to a surprisingly cathartic climax, with layers of processed vocals creating a choir of selves that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant.

The album's emotional centrepiece, "Fish in the Pool," finds Yeule at their most vulnerable, contemplating isolation and connection over a backdrop of shimmering ambient textures. "I'm just a fish swimming in your pool," they sing, capturing the particular loneliness of existing in digital spaces—always visible, never truly seen. It's a sentiment that will resonate with anyone who's ever felt like a ghost in the machine of modern life.

Sonically, *Glitch Princess* occupies a fascinating middle ground between the ethereal and the abrasive. Yeule draws from a palette that includes everything from shoegaze guitar washes to granular synthesis, creating compositions that feel both organic and algorithmic. The production, handled largely by Yeule themselves with assistance from collaborator Kin Leonn, has a deliberately lo-fi quality that makes even the most pristine moments feel slightly degraded, as if the music itself is slowly corrupting in real-time.

The album isn't without its challenges. At 14 tracks and nearly an hour in length, *Glitch Princess* occasionally feels indulgent, with some of the more ambient pieces functioning better as interludes than standalone compositions. "Sulky Baby" meanders without finding its centre, while the closing "Software Update" feels more like a conceptual exercise than an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

Yet these minor quibbles pale beside the album's considerable achievements. *Glitch Princess* succeeds in creating a fully realised world—one where technology and emotion exist in constant dialogue, where malfunction becomes a form of expression, and where the digital realm offers not escape from human experience but a new lens through which to examine it.

In an era where AI-generated music threatens to flood the cultural landscape, Yeule's work feels like a necessary reminder that the most interesting art happens not when humans are replaced by machines, but when the boundary between the two becomes beautifully, productively blurred. *Glitch Princess* positions Yeule as one of our most essential guides to this brave new world, offering not answers but better questions about what it means to be human in an increasingly posthuman age.

As ambient music continues its unlikely journey toward the mainstream, Yeule stands apart—too experimental for pop, too melodic for pure abstraction, existing in their own category entirely. *Glitch Princess* confirms them as a vital