AJA follows her self-titled 2018 debut on Opal Tapes with 'Slug', an intensely emotional work mapping the journey of recovery through addiction through a lightning jar of relentless beats, vocal mutations and bracing noise.

Opener “Flesh Tactic” decomposes through wraithlike synths distorting and feedback knotting around ever shifting drum patterns. AJA’s use of stereo panning conveying a sense of being trapped in your own head, where everything is fragmented and you feel disoriented.

The sick aggression of “Grime” represents AJA regaining power and clarity. A focussed onslaught of bursting energy. Mind and body locked in resentment and frustration manifest as a riot of pugilistic beats and grinding synths.

Masterstroke “Skittish” finds Aja purging the energy and ideas rushing around her head through her drum machine. An alien intelligence at work as beats sputter, slap and seethe, AJA switching between multiple tracks and kits, BPM mutating and patterns dice rolled into new forms.

An homage to SOPHIE, “Slug” is high NRG admiration bottled for the late producer to create fierce techno, gleaming with metallic tones, sharpened to cut through a dancefloor with scything ability.

The hyper rhythmic and turbulent sound world of the first four gives way to the layered vocals and shimmering textures of “Grief Hole”, a beatless track that emerges, crawling. The lyrics find her urging the core of her addiction to “go back inside” and let her be. The track ends with a moment of levity in the form of a voicemail from her dad, his warm greeting lifting AJA out of it and forward.

“Ode to SOPHIE” cuts from a sample pack created by the late producer. Off-stepping bass abstractions give the heartbeat to a vocal cut of excoriating power. Glinting knife sharpeners and glottal syncopations wrap themselves in knots around this dark confessional.

Created for an installation and virtual reality animation by artist Ryan Heath, “The Thinning” takes inspiration from the “witch marks” at Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, England. Several centuries ago, locals carved ritual protection marks in the caves to protect themselves from death, disease and evil forces. AJA combines field recordings from the caves with synthetic sounds made by sonifying the symbols in the Pixelsynth app, creating a sonic manifestation of otherworldly forces.

And out. Exhausted. Slug is an immense, damaging and damaged listen.

SLUG

Live

Rarely does a debut release come with such a powerful impact as this, the self titled recording by AJA.

Maximal in approach, AJA deploys rhythmic noise, bomb heavy drum machine, convolving vocal utterance and a dedicated hell-scape of field recordings, abrupt sound design and blistering drone. These recordings feel expelled rather than composed, a lashing of energy captured. The unhinged nature of her recorded work is complimented in what are soon becoming legendary live performances wherein the AJA experience is fully realised.

As a collaborator with designer LU LA LOOP, AJA’s sounds have bruised the runway of Berlin Alternative Fashion Week. Her work within the LGBTQ community running workshops in sound art and as an advocate of promoting and increasing the presence of women in electronic music, has seen her work carry throughout Europe and more recently to Brazil. It is in within the context of transgressive art, sexual identity/ politic and grass roots teaching that AJA’s work is elevated into a neo-punk.

The self-titled Opal Tapes release opens with the swaggering, drunken lurch of “Rattles”. Claustrophobically building toward release but never achieving, AJA’s voice dominates the track in an almost wordless epiphany which is re-digested by digital bacterium. “Charge” resonates in golden tone as pylon-heavy drones fry away above, the beat, still present; remains leaden, dragging it’s weight forward. “Sweat Pearls” is arrhythmic and paranoid, stuttering kick patterns charge out draped in psychotic wailing. The A side closes out with “XLR”, a mixed resolution of glorious sound design, crunching and clunking like ancient calculators while AJA’s voice soars above.

“Tuck It, Tape It” offers minute respite before the immense energy of the B side begins it’s mission to excoriate. Breathlessly oscillating between high speed industrial ache and rubbered up cleaving, the track pushes toward palpitating levels of intensity. “Black Stain” gutturally digests to follow up, textured vocals push rich drones along while grim MS-20 sits low and stern rumbling the track forward. High energy reigns back in for closer “Marbles”. A seven minute flex over a delicate ambient backdrop which climbs up and over into a full on trance denial.

AJA is cementing her place at the front of confrontational, psycho-visceral, truly new music. Opal Tapes are enormously proud to work with her on this full debut release. Her previous work can be heard on Perc’s album “Bitter Music” (track title “Spit”) and on the recent Opal Tapes compilation “The Harvest Of A Quiet Eye”.

Aja Ireland - Cryptid
Label: Infinite Machine
CAT#: IM116
Format: Digital
Release Date: January 31, 2025

Artwork by Joey Holder

Cryptid

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AJA @ For K-Punk: Ghosts of my Life (Live at The Lubber Fiend) - October 2022

Flesh Tactic

Grief Hole

Ode To Sophie

0.00 - GLASS GHOST - AJA
2.00 - Reboot the Phuture - Rebekah
5.50 - Halo Effect - Rebekah
9.30 - LUXXURY - AJA
11.55 - Sleepy Hollow - Headless Horseman
15.42 - Kontrola - Lag
19.00 - Appetite for Mercy - HUM
23.40 - AUSTERE - AJA
27.04 - Sensitive Power - Marco Leckbert
32.09 - Brushing My Teeth With Razor Blades - RZVX
36.34 - Numb, Undone (Rebekah Remix) - Louisahhh
40.39 - MAIN - AJA
44.35 - Antrieb - Hakkon
48.30 - TBC
51.00 - Crisis Of Confidence - Jennifer Walton
53.00 - AYA - tailwind
54.20 - Mun Sing - Mercy To Your Cadence

AJA - 2023 Mix

Remix of Mun Sing - Mercy To Your Cadence by Aja Ireland

Mun Sing X AJA - Mercy To Your Cadence Remix

Grime

Skittish

Tuck It Tape It

XLR Noir

Sweat Pearls

Charge

Rattles

Experimental sound and performance artist Aja Ireland delivers an electrifying guest mix, featuring tracks from her latest album Cryptid, which dropped in January.

The Ravers Hour BBC Radio 6 Music

2. Cryptid

4. 5 Of Cups

3. Death Drop

7. Little Butt Baddie

6. The Day I Fell Without My Wings I Landed In An Intimate Trap

5. If You Don't Exist

1. Pearls Bleed Too

8. Hundreds Of Tiny Discomforts

Raw Techno Mix Sep 2025

Pageant Crack

Live performance by AJA on NTS Radio - Don't Trip
++ Due DJ set from AJA and Sly & The Family Drone's Matt Cargill

www.nts.live/shows/dont-trip/episodes/dont-trip-13th-march-2017
www.facebook.com/musicwithaja
www.helloaja.co.uk

Live On NTS Radio - Don't Trip

Aja Ireland is an award-winning sound and performance artist making deconstructed club and industrial techno whose live shows are described in The WIRE Magazine as “Shifting from ethereal diffusions to potent explosions." 

The album SLUG was released on Opal Tapes in October 2021. The video GRIME created by IMPATV and AJA, featured on Creative Review's 'Best Music Videos of 2021’ who described the track as: “brutal, visceral and unrelentingly noisy”.

Aja's debut album released in 2018 on Opal Tapes was greeted with critical acclaim and the artist was featured in VICE, The Quietus, Elephant Magazine, Red Bull Music and The Dazed Magazine. IN 2018, Aja won the PRS Oram Award for innovative music production. 

Aja scored the spatial sound design for Joey Holder’s art installations Ophiux, Adcredo The Deep Belief Network (toured at Matt's Gallery and 6th Athens Bienalle), Semelparous which was shown in The British Art Show and and Cryptic at Two Queens Gallery.

Aja Ireland

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