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

This edition features sample-heavy electronica by Obsolete Aesthetics, fuzz-fi by Lantern Lens, Irish-steeped instrumentals by Kitty Donohoe, multigenre pop by Andrés Soto, and an experimental jam by Laserbeams of Boredom.

Obsolete Aesthetics, Ope! I Did It Again
Longtime Ann Arboite (and former AllMusic.com employee) Ryan Cady is Obsolete Aesthetics, a musical project built on samples. Ope! I Did It Again is a collection of pieces he put together for his thesis at New York University, but the 12 tracks hang together like a true album. Cady was a drummer in several local bands, including some who released music on his Selfish Agenda label, but Obsolete Aesthetics is the first time he's stepped out as a leader. The glitchy sounds, manic drums, and voices gathered from overheard conversations take me back to the early 1990s, when groups such as Autechre, Scanner, and Coldcut gathered found sounds and combined them into dexterous tracks that evoked hip-hop, ambient, and sometimes danceable musique concrète all at once. Also available on vinyl.

Lantern Lens, I Sense There Is an Infinite Rage
Sebastian Bluejay is the person behind Lantern Lens, playing every instrument on these 10 songs of overdriven indie and garage rock tunes. The Ypsi artist evokes the pre-computer age of recording, when people were bashing out fuzzed-out lo-fi records on their four tracks.

Kitty Donohoe, A Murder of Crows
The new album by Ann Arbor's Kitty Donohoe is a collection of instrumentals—with some melody vocalizations—that draw from Irish, Celtic, bluegrass, and folk music. The 10 songs are a mix of originals and traditional tunes, I think mostly pulled from her previous recordings. ("The Star of the County Down," for instance, is also on Donohoe's prior album, 2017's The Irishman's Daughter.) While Donohoe has a lovely voice, as her numerous prior albums show, fans will appreciate having all her instrumental interpretations in one place on A Murder of Crows.

Andrés Soto, Sens of Urgency
Andrés Soto is studying upright bass at U-M and is slated to earn a 2026 bachelor's in jazz and contemporary improvisation. But his debut album, Sens of Urgency, eschews jazz in favor of an electronic, pop, dance, and sometimes Latin-tinged collection of songs that skip around genres like someone spinning a radio dial. Basically, Soto is stuntin'—and I mean that with deep respect—and showing off his skills as a composer and studio guy. That also means this solo record can sometimes feel like a survey of musical styles rather than a cohesive collection, but there's no denying there's a huge talent behind these sounds.

Laserbeams of Boredom, "Upside-Down Garfield"
Drummer Craig Johnson put out one of my favorite local records of 2024: the funky, dubby, post-punk experimental jam Basement Snacks, under his Laserbeams of Boredom guise. It was the first Laserbeams record in seven years, but we didn't have to wait that long for the follow-up. Perhaps you grabbed Johnson's Plasm cassette at his February show at Ypsilanti's Dreamland Theatre. If not, it should be on Bandcamp at some point, where you can also find this out-there, one-off single "Upside-Down Garfield," which is all about Johnson's hatred of Mondays. (No comment yet on his feelings about lasagne.)

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