Plastic Ivy has one sole figure listed as her influence: Marcel Duchamp. Taking inspiration from Duchamp’s philosophy of art serving the mind over the eye, Philadelphia artist Lira Marie Landes has utilised this cerebral approach to explore her search for self-knowledge and actualisation, in the midst of a gender transition during the writing and recording of the album.

The Glass Horizon is six songs of exemplary minimal-synth pop, taking cues from the rich crop of contemporary icy synthesist’s (Xeno & Oaklander, Void Vision, Speaking Parts) and authentic electronic sonics being attributed to her primary use of analogue Roland keyboards. ‘Exit Strategy’ is a frenetic chiller, chunky arpreggiators drive against discordant sinewaves, echoing the aggression heard on Martial Canterel’s Gyors Lassú. Landes’s Residents-like vocals come to the fore on lead single (video shot by Liz Wendelbo) ‘Never Caught in Amber’, a jubilant BPM pop-banger espousing the liberation of embracing your true self. Epiphany turns to playful with instrumental ‘Sticky Fears of Inner Néant’, complete with melodica played by Landes herself, before the post-punk ‘Anaphora’ details the blank canvas our bodies are, backed by Frank (Just Frank) indie guitars and a glorious big synth lead right at home with The Cure’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. Menace follows with the cavernous funk of ‘Usury’, then cinematic closer ‘Love on the Floor’ drops us into a sea of reverb and delay, held together by steady drum machines and bass throbs, culminating to a thrilling end to the atmospheric tundra.

Plastic Ivy’s sophomore effort is a dynamic first entry to a proposed series of thematic works, and her balancing of pop immediacy and the weighty quest to promote communication and questioning have been well and truly realised.