It takes a brave – and educated – band to name an album after a famed Greek philosopher. And it takes a skilled one to make such a link relevant to the music.

For this alone, WRAY’s ‘Hypatia’ is something of a curious and entertaining diversion. It’s not every day an album comes out named after one of the strongest and most iconic women in Greco-Roman history; someone famed for advances in philosophy, astronomy and mathematics and whose death is held up as a watermark of the period.

So it’s fitting that ‘Hypatia’ is so cosmically frenzied, played with laser-guided precision and blessed with a mournful undertone that it is at turns enchanting and beguiling, and at others oppressively crushing.

Taking cues from shoegaze, psych and indie rock ‘Hypatia’ is devilishly seductive stuff, confident in its own skin and not afraid to push the boundaries of genre constraints. In fact, Sonic Youth is a reference point I kept returning to, and there’s certainly something about ‘Hypatia’ that owes a debt of gratitude to the New York mob’s output. That’s not to say ‘Hypatia’ feels like a work of hero worship – far from it, in fact – just that there’s a similar bravado about WRAY’s approach that makes ‘Hypatia’ consistently thrilling.

Cuts like ‘Below’, ‘Regular’ and the epic ‘Mounts Minding’ are swirling, atmosphere-laden gems, driven by rhythmic guitars and some really subtle hooks, while the frenetic ‘Giant’ or infectious ‘Jennifer’ will worm their way into your skull quickly after a couple of listens.

Yet ‘Hypatia’ is an album that feels more than the sum of its parts. There’s a uniformity to the sound and the songs which drags you through, resulting in a gorgeous flow of peaks and troughs, instrumental interludes and ever-changing hooks and melodies to get lost in. It’s an ambitious piece of work, but one that succeeds beautifully.

4.5/5

’Hypatia’ by WRAY is released on 25 March on Communicating Vessels.

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Words by Rob Mair (@BobNightMair)