Sitting with magic: On Dagmar Zuniga & Katsy Pline

I'm out on the very west coast of Scotland this week, in an old cottage, warmed only by the fire. Out across the field, over the dunes, the sea is just a few minutes walk away. You can hear the waves breaking when the wind is right. There are three beaches, divided by two rocky outcrops that, from high above, look like the feet of a monster stepping out into the sea.

The storm came yesterday, huge gusts of wind that bent the trees and rattled the old roof, rain that never ceased. The living space has two small windows, one above the kitchen sink, one next to the armchair where I sit and watch the birds dart to and from the swinging feeders. Natural light is minimal regardless of the weather, but as I write this a band of it reaches in and falls on the sofa next to me.

Yesterday, as evening began to form at the edges, I suddenly noticed the absence of outside sounds, the wind dropping away to nothing after hours of relentless white noise. I stepped out to find a patch of blue sky above, a hush of golden hour light in the big white clouds. Seizing the moment, I strode out across the grass, out to the headland where you can look west, where last time I was here it was so clear I watched the sun carefully sink into the furthest point of the horizon, where the sea meets the sky.

I walk up over the crest of the dunes and the scene stops me in my tracks. A band of bright bold gold sits horizontally in the space between the sea-line and the heavy dark clouds above. This golden light spreads right across the horizon, passing over the Small Isles that sit a few miles out to sea, illuminating their mountains tops in a haze of light. I've spent my fair share of timing watching the sun go down but I've never seen anything like it.

This is my third day here and I've spent most of that time in a similar state of awe, getting to know a couple of records that I'm playing almost on a continuous back-to-back loop. Both carry strange colours and shapes, both seem to hold the light in ways that feel completely unique.

Both were also released in 2025, although 4AD have just picked up Dagmar Zuniga's extravagantly-titled in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music for a much-deserved re-release and vinyl pressing in just a few weeks time.

It's a miraculous album, the Nicaraguan-American artist placing colourful collage-pieces upon folk traditionals, forming whole new worlds of their own. There's a start and end point but what happens in-between is wildly hypnotic – in the true sense of that sensation. When you're in it, time itself feels skewed, the music drifting in and transporting you somewhere else entirely.

I've seen it described as psych-folk but it feels too subtle for that. It drifts in almost weightlessly, the strange sounds flickering in and out of focus, as if you're catching a mysterious radio show on the very tip of the breeze. Carried in from some faraay unknown. The tape hisses; the guitars skew and wilt and grow once more; the synths softly shimmer, holding the light. It all feels a lot like magic, and I think it is.

Similarly distinctive, Live at the Three Teardrops by Katsy Pline is another collection where it feels somewhat fruitless trying to describe it on a page, knowing it could never illustrate the sensation of sitting with these beautiful, and beautifully odd, songs.

An experimental guitarist and yodeler, Live at the Three Teardrops leans more into the former of those guises, while still holding space for the latter to drift in alongside and gently, genuinely astound. Released back in August of 2025, this collection features pedal steel from Phill Hermans, while Katsy Pline paints vivid colours from a collection of guitar, voice, synths, bass, a B-Bender Talkbox and various other electronics.

Said to be an exploration of "the infinite blue", the album features four new ambient pieces from Kline alongside "reharmonized versions of classic country songs" all of which are searching "for the living torch amidst the rubble and despair of the contemporary". Old meets new, grey turns to blue. Both hold.

Spellbinding, beautifully lived-in, endlessly curious, Live at the Three Teardrops is like nothing else I've ever heard, not really. It's an enveloping of worlds, of fabrics and textures of people and place, all folded in together and then shaped into something that, for reasons I'm still trying to work out, makes me choke-up the moment I stop whatever else I'm doing and just sit with it; watch the last of the light turn to gold and swallow the islands.

Dagmar Zunigar's in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music is released on vinyl April 10th, via 4AD. Buy it here.

Dagmar plays three live shows to accmpany the release:

10 April - THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS, Rewire Festival
11 April - BRISTOL, UK,  Saccade Festival
13 April - LONDON, UK, Cafe Oto

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Live at the Three Teardrops is out now, and available via Paisley Shirt Records

Enjoy...