BL-001 – AshTreJinkins (2025) – Album Review

Album: BL-001

Artist: AshTreJinkins

Label: Buried Light Recordings

Release Date: April 6, 2025

AshTreJinkins makes music. That was the extent of my knowledge of this human before listening to this album. For me, that was enough to get started. You don’t walk into a haunted house asking for blueprints. I started listening to BL-001 about a month ago and then got distracted, but when I came back to review it, I found his other album “IT’S TRASH NOW” and listened to that all the way through. I loved it, but I also had that ever important context. And not the sterile kind you get from a bio or a press kit. When discovering new artists, I like to learn about them from their music first and then find out more about their lives after in articles I come across.

What I know about BL-001 is that I really love Jinkins’ way of handling sound. Some people have a frequency or a resonance that transcends genres or hollow realities – AshTreJinkins has that freqency. Some records just walk up and shake your hand – that’s this record. It’s techno, it’s ambient, it’s hip-hop and it’s certainly IDM. The spoken word intro track, Watching,Waiting., is nice and crispy. Of course the poetry is haunting and weird, but I love the music behind it – very 2005 in that kind of way. The rough reverb and intentional scorched arpeggios are just fantastic. Then the record descends into an absolutely stunning ambient techno showcase. I think the only aspect that frustrates me, is that I’m left wanting more. There’s always that cruel itch of wanting one more track, one more descent. But that’s not really a complaint. There’s plenty more to dig into and their discography is quite large. The stand out track for me is definitely “Requires Silence“. Just, pure bliss and that track length kept me satisfied.

Would definitely recommend this album.