Baba Stiltz has spent the better part of a decade following his instincts into increasingly unpredictable musical territory. Somewhere along the way, the Swedish-American producer, songwriter and restless shapeshifter began stripping things back, searching for something worth holding on to.
Raised between Stockholm and California, Stiltz has lived several musical lives. From American primitive guitar excursions and productions for Yung Lean to off-kilter house releases on Studio Barnhus and XL Recordings, his curiosity has taken him around the world. There’s also a background in ballet, a stint in modelling and a Guldbagge Award for film scoring. A peculiar CV, even by underground standards.
Recent releases reveal a more introspective chapter. On Paid Testimony (2023, Public Possession) and Blurb, his collaboration with Okay Kaya, Stiltz turns towards sparse arrangements, deadpan vocals and quietly devastating observations of everyday life. His Lou Reed-like delivery drifts through songs populated by disillusioned young professionals, romantic uncertainty and the strange theatre of contemporary existence.
His new album Totally, released October 2026, takes these preoccupations further. Recorded in a Helsinki studio with a drummer and completed with five days of overdubs, it gathers songs written across several years into a loose meditation on grief, memory, relationships and the absurdities of contemporary life. Everyday details become small existential dramas, delivered with characteristic understatement and a crooked sense of humour.
“I want to be scared, I don’t want to know what I’m doing,” he once said. A productive philosophy for an artist increasingly at home in the unknown.
For fans of: Arthur Russell, Dean Blunt, John Maus, Alex G, Lou Reed, Okay Kaya, HTRK, Bill Callahan, ML Buch, Smerz, Joanne Robertson, Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake.