Album review: Ray Noir – Scorpio

“To make this mixtape,” Ray Noir reveals of Scorpio, “I’ve been homeless and couch surfing for months.” It shows. All scuffed edges and sacrifice, this seven-track mixtape doesn’t just pulsate with all the passion of an artist who’s invested everything in its creation, it drips with the sleaze and desperation of life lived on society’s shadowy underbelly. Frankly, it’s nothing less than these bruised midnight anthems demand.

There’s a lot going on beneath Ray Noir’s surface. Get past that wry, polished outer shell – a record title that references its author’s alluring star sign, faintly tongue-in-cheek allusions to French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in his stage name – there is a swirling ocean of insecurity and struggle, reckoning on everything from coming of age as an alienated outsider in Norway to life as a queer figurehead for UK alternative in 2024.

In songs like Pity Party and Lonely King, a dark sonic spectrum bubbles away, too, pulling from the electro-metal of heavyweights like Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails, the gothy swagger of She Wants Revenge and Interpol, and even the alt.pop spark of Robyn. It’s the inbuilt tension of the compositions that truly set them off, though, the knife-edge balance between distance and desire in the pounding beats of Latency, and the overbearing threat and underlying vulnerability on jittery highlight YMATD.

Ultimately, of course, Scorpio works best as a tantalising glimpse into Ray Noir’s deliciously twisted vision. Bigger sounds and broader pictures surely lie just over the horizon, but he’s already delivered enough intoxicating, addictive darkness to guarantee you'll be back for more…

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Nine Inch Nails, She Wants Revenge, Carpenter Brut

Scorpio is out now. Ray Noir will play an EP release party at Blondies in London tonight, January 12.