Inward Eye

Spacemoth — 2026

“Inward Eye turns circular grooves, crystal-clear vocals, and patient psych textures into a headphone record that keeps opening up.”

Maryam Qudus has spent years behind the board at Oakland studios building records for other people, so it makes sense that her second album as Spacemoth sounds like someone who knows exactly how every loop should breathe. Inward Eye came together in motion, a lot of it written in the back of a tour van with a synthesizer small enough to live in a backpack, and that restlessness works its way into the music. The songs ride circular basslines and drum patterns that lock in tight, then quietly drift and rearrange the second you stop paying attention. I love how patient the whole thing is, how it trusts you to settle in rather than just going for a big hook. The foot tapping grooves with Qudus’s siren-like vocals make for a killer combination that is hard to turn down. Track after track you will fall in love with the groove and then when Qudus’s crystal clear vocals break through it is hard to let go.

The record is really about holding onto the present while the world keeps yanking you somewhere else, and it leans on the cool, controlled groove of old krautrock to get there. To my ears it is both beat-machine synths and daydream psych that hold this album together. Her vocals are so good but she uses them to flow with the wandering structure of the precise instruments. Inward Eye is the rare headphone record that gets richer every time you disappear into it.

“Do We Exist?” opens the record on a lone bouncing bassline and keeps stacking pieces, a twinkling synth here, a crunchy guitar sample there, until Qudus repeats “we’re all alone in this world” so many times it flips from a statement into a real question. “Internet Fantasy” rides a droning organ and a snug drum pattern that feels almost too comfortable, then detonates into a spray of synth sparkle right when you get settled, which completely works and makes you want to hear the track again. “Telepathic Butterflies” is a track I really liked with its hypnotic pulse threaded with quick-keyed synths while Qudus sighs her melodies straight through all that blinking machinery.

Stereolab is the deepest match, the band that turned droning repetition and breezy pop melody into the trick Qudus pulls here, steady motorik motion built around a hummable center. The LA trio Automatic gets at the colder side of that pulse, building songs on a drum machine and a few icy synth lines until the repetition becomes its own kind of trance. Khruangbin comes to mind on the warmer end of those hypnotic basslines. Lastly, seek out the German duo Cluster, who proved machines looping in place could feel alive.

Records like this reward the people willing to sit still inside them. The past keeps playing in the corner of your eye, and Qudus found a way to let it loop without ever pulling you under.