Back in March, XLR8Rannounced the debut album from RAAR co-founder Maelstrom, titled Her Empty Eyes.

The LP is a stunning representation of Maelstrom’s evolution and history as a producer, presenting 11 tracks that sit in the nether regions between techno, industrial, and ambient. Harking back to Maelstrom’s love of graphic novels, Her Empty Eyes is a score to an imaginary novel taking place between 1936 and 1939 in which a female photojournalist named Maria navigates and documents war-torn Spain. Along the way, after investigating the murder of Jose Robles, she meets John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemmingway at Hotel Florida in Madrid, Georges Orwell and Buenavaentura Durruti on the frontline, and anonymous volunteers of the International Brigades in Barcelona. As Maelstrom describes: “This is not a metaphor nor an essay, this is the outline of a story. It’s the listener’s place to make sense of it. The context is a civil war. The characters are a photo-reporter, famous writers, and anonymous heroes, and my music is its soundtrack.”

The album is at once fierce, tender, meditative, and haunting, a beautiful collection of tracks that play out like a sonic film. Ahead of the May 19 release, you can pre-order the album here and stream it in full via the player below.