Nia Archives' 'Emotional Junglist' is a Boundless, Untethered Second Album
Two years after her 2024 debut Silence Is Loud, Nia Archives returns with Emotional Junglist, out via her own HIJINXX imprint through Island. DIY handed it four stars, calling it the sound of “an evolved Nia; she’s untethered and boundless, traversing the new without straying too far from the old.” The album fuses her beloved jungle and drum-and-bass breakbeats with indie-pop, post-punk, and new wave songwriting, with Sampha and Jorja Smith turning up as guests. “To be an Emotional Junglist,” Archives said of the record, “is to feel everything and nothing at all once. It’s to be calm yet chaotic, sane yet manic — up, down and sideways.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Self-produced, the way her best work always has been — the breakbeats keep their rolling, physical urgency even as the songs around them get more melodic and pop-facing. The rhythm section never stops feeling like a rave, even when the top line is aching.
The Spatial Dynamics: The production is genuinely sophisticated in how it stitches genres together — jungle’s low-end and rave heritage sitting under indie-pop hooks and post-punk angularity without either side flattening the other.
Standout Performance
Archives herself, uninhibited. Tracks like “Feelingz Go Numb” and “Around Tha Bend” ask her to be rebellious, sexy, and dangerous all at once, and she sounds like she’s having the time of her life doing it.
Why It’s Certified
“Get Me Down” does the heavy emotional lifting the title promises, while the Sampha and Jorja Smith features arrive as color rather than crutch. A breakup album you can still rave to is a hard trick to land twice — Nia Archives lands it. Certified great.