Photo by Lane Nelson

Artist: Nyxy Nyx, the four-piece of vocalist and guitarist Brian Reichert, guitarist Tim Jordan, bassist Benjamin Schurr, and drummer Alex Ha

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Buzz: You don’t need these pages to once again remind you that there was a lot of great shoegaze to be heard in 2025, yet it was TAGABoW mastermind Doug Dulgarian’s Julia’s War label that had an absolute grip on the scene. Nyxy Nyx have long been part of that story, however, even before then. Forming back in 2017 as a performance-based experimental rock project between founding member Brian Reichard and visual artist Drew Saracco, the prolific DIY recordings under the Nyxy Nyx banner have become a thing of modern alternative lore, featuring contributions from the likes of a pre-famous MJ Lenderman and a host of others across the Philly underground before more formally solidifying itself as a proper rock band including past and presents members from Knifeplay, Sun Organ, and Luna Honey in Alex Ha, Tim Jordan, and Benjamin Schurr.

Entitling their first proper studio release and breakthrough Cult Classics Vol. 1 isn’t overstating it. Far in sonic distance from Riechert’s vacant acoustic bedroom sweeps of Nyxi Nyx’s nascent yesterdays committed to tapes and CD-Rs, the four-piece — joined here by Midwife’s Madeline Johnston and A Sunny Day In Glasgow’s Josh Meakim — are cultivating a sound that’s an uncanny detour away from everything explicitly guitar-driven and feedback-drenched, but not necessarily intently slowcore. The brutalism of tracks like “empty gesture” and “ashtray” pile on sludgy noise rock boulders in their weight whereas “they called u -Wild-” and “in haze” are a Lynchian portrayal of a ghastly alt-country Americana. The ground and air become transcendent wherever Nyxi Nyx’s current flows into their proximity, upending laws of matter.

For those already needing to imagine the band’s future arc? You needn’t wait, as their newly released mini album (EP?,) NYXY NYX self-titled, doubles as a bridge onto the road to Cult Classics Vol. 1 by recontextualizing their sound in higher fidelity to similar beguiling effects in noise-to-haunting silence ratio.

Sound: The true sound of the modern Philly shoegaze underground made with no filters and only devotion

Nyxy Nyx’s Cult Classics Vol. 1 is available now on Julia’s War. NYXY NYX self-titled is available now.