Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features worldly improv-rock by Jesse Stiles and Bombici, healing ambient by Golden Feelings, political metalcore by Loss of Life, hyper-pop emo by Sacha, and electronica by Delphine Delight.

Jesse Stiles and Bombici, Live at Studio B
Before Jesse Stiles joined the University of Michigan's Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, he was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and led bands in Pittsburgh. That's the city where Bombici's Live at Studio B was laid down—in real time, in one take. The album was recorded at WQED, the Steel City's PBS station, along with a concert film documenting the show in July 2023. The gig was the culmination of six years of Bombici's improv-heavy jams, which play with unusual time signatures, Eastern and Arabic modalities, and a combination of electric and acoustic instruments. The video isn't a straight documentation, either; lots of unique camera angles, edits, and optical illusions add to the music's overall psychedelic wooziness—like you've stumbled into something that's part jazz, part world music, part rave. (Here's a hyperlocal reference point: Imagine the Dave Sharp Worlds Quartet being accompanied by Dr. Pete Larson on electronics.)

Golden Feelings, The Complete Vibe Engineers Meditations (Subscriber Archives Vol. 1)
Golden Feelings, The Complete Mellow Vibrations (Subscriber Archives Vol. 2)
Dustin Krcatovich draws exquisite sound baths. As Golden Feelings, the Ypsi artist makes ambient music geared toward meditative practices, and between 2021 and 2023 he released a monthly series of healing sounds for subscribers. He's now put those recordings out for wider release in two chakra-aligning volumes. If you love drones and the infinite worlds they conjure, you'll love Golden Feelings.

Loss of Life, "Pride Was a Riot"
Self-described "MySpace-Core" band Loss of Life makes its recorded debut with "Pride Was a Riot." The Ypsi quartet's moshy metalcore sound may be from a different age of social media, but the lyrics are completely contemporary while acknowledging the past. I can't always figure out exactly what vocalist Matty is barking on the song, but the tune's title gives me context: the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, which was a series of protests starting in 1969 against police brutality in New York City against gay patrons of the Stonewall Inn. The past is prologue, and the modern-day assault on LGBTQ+ rights portends more songs like this one.

Sacha, "Todo Que Hago"
Based on his debut single, "Todo Que Hago," Ann Arbor's Sacha makes music that lands somewhere between hyper-pop and emo-rap. There's a lot going on sonically including blown-out vocals that go into falsettos, distorted bass lines, and sweeping synth melodies. But there's also a simplicity to the music that makes it an easy earworm even if everything feels like it's seething with intensity.

Delphine Delight, "I See You in Everything"
Ann Arbor's Andrew Nosay, aka Delphine Delight, hasn't released a track in three years, but "I See You in Everything" is worth the wait. It's a brooding, percussive jam with a slow build that almost sounds industrial before it disintegrates momentarily into ambient bliss—and then comes back extra funky. 

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.