Swedish producer, DJ, and vocalist Oli XL brings a certain glitzy ambition to his glitchy creations, the kind that can translate the ambiguous atmospheres of left-field electronic music for relative newcomers. There’s an earnest fervor around his work; in fan Q&As, he fields nerdy, in-the-weeds questions about the minutiae of his process and inspirations. Acolytes have clamored for Oli’s debut project on Warp Records for years (single “Go Oli Go!” came out way back in 2021), circulating the tongue-in-cheek hashtag “#FreeOli” as he’s navigated what he terms “contract hell” with the label. Following a surprise drop in August, the record is free: Lick the Lens — Pt. 1 (which anticipates an eventual Pt. 2 later this year) offers chic, indie-tronic glamor and the irrepressible fizz of a kid winning the science fair.

It’s been a long, atomized six years since Oli’s year0001 imprint Bloom put out 2019’s Rogue Intruder, Soul Enhancer, a perceptive set of zero-gravity breakbeat meditations that drew on Basement Jaxx, Laurel Halo and Beck. Since then, pandemic-induced school closures gave legions of young DAW warriors an excuse to polish, share, and export their productions; Oli’s Stockholm peers now sell out world tours with their polarizing aura; one of the UK’s biggest acts went viral by cooing into the void over Adam F. Oli has said Lick the Lens’ mini-album format was inspired by K-pop, a choice that might scan as gimmicky in an earlier era of IDM, but hardly registers as such in 2025’s online hodge-podge, a decade removed from PC Music’s emergence. Still, it hints at a tension in appraising these songs: Behind their glossy surface aesthetic, do they work as communal pop, introverted electronica, both, or neither?

The answer, like the music, is hard to pin down. “HOODIE MUSIC” plants its hands in its pockets: Oli proclaims his own insularity (“I’m shy!”) while delirious post-dubstep chords buoy the track in the absence of percussion. With a somewhat muted presence as a vocalist, Oli doesn’t quite attempt the art-school cheek of, say, the Copenhagen scene, or the koan-style writing of the drainers. Instead, he’s frank and understated. Think of him as the quiet tinkerer who lights up when you ask about his favorite plugins. As he works queasy lines in between james K’s gossamer melodies on “DRIFT REGALIA,” you worry he might float away into the ether like his giggly samples, heart-flutter kick patterns only briefly steadying things.

Lick the Lens — Pt. 1 prefers communicating through rhythmic uncertainty and antsy sound selection rather than more obvious structural ideas, often leaving big emotions only half-resolved before switching gears. If Actress had sought pop notoriety like so many acclaimed 2010s experimentalists, it might feel like this; for a more recent comparison, Oklou’s opaque wisps of rave euphoria on choke enough come to mind. “CONSPIRACY GIRL,” with Valeria Litvakov, stutters in place for a moment of Sweet Trip-style daydreaming, eager to subside without any fanfare once it’s given you something to ponder. The closest Oli gets to a song with a beltable chorus is on the Chanel Beads-featuring highlight “LOVE & POP,” which keeps its catharsis diffuse. Spunky vocal hooks (“I think I’m glued onto your back now…”) billow out behind an airlock, while impish IDM beat tricks occupy the bulk of the mix.

Oli’s elated technical sugar-rush drowns out most residual apprehension, and he’s assisted by a roster of other artists (five feature credits across 25 minutes) who quickly toggle in and out of view. This feels like social music, despite how pressurized and headphone-forward it is; you might imagine a group of people passing around a laptop at a party, each dragging and dropping fragments of themselves into the tracks. Oli and Ecco2k’s pixie voices trade off seamlessly on “NOSEBLEED MELODY,” just a few effects-knob twitches apart, as a limber trip-hop loop broods underneath them to steal gulps of their helium. “MUTE THE WORLD” twinkles and lurches around an interpolation of Simian Mobile Disco’s “Hustler,” perhaps in tribute to an earlier era of alternative-minded dance pastiche.

“[My music isn’t] supposed to exist together with anything going on in this boring world,” Oli XL told CRACK magazine in 2020, expressing a desire to detach from the zeitgeist and dive into his personal rabbit holes. The space he constructs on Lick the Lens — Pt. 1 feels like a mini-world unto itself—lively, meticulous, a little claustrophobic. Edits and reworks of the new material will surely proliferate throughout the SoundCloud solar system for the next six years. Maybe the Warp association ended up slowing his career down, but with Lick the Lens, Oli’s joined a long lineage of acts on the label—Prefuse 73, Rustie, FlyLo—making analogues of pop glutamate with the slanted sound-design tools of their respective eras. The dream is to scratch the right sensory itch, crafting jagged keepsakes you can share with the ones who get it.