Alchemy begins with pressure. Base matter must enter heat, darkness and change before it can take another form.
Anastasia Rydlevskaya applies that ancient structure to "Alchemia", her fourth full-length album. The Poland-based songwriter and song producer follows a heroine who moves from betrayal and toxic attachment toward control of her own voice.
Each phase carries a different emotional charge. Yet the record does not tidy pain into an easy parable. It keeps collapse, rage and self-possession close together.
That choice gives this dark electronic album its gravity.
Rydlevskaya divides "Alchemia" into "Nigredo", "Albedo" and "Calcinatio", "Citrinitas", and "Rubedo". The sequence borrows the classical stages of alchemy, then uses them to chart recovery after a traumatic relationship.
"Nigredo", or blackening, confronts depression, betrayal and the self’s most punishing thoughts. "Was It All Worth It?" holds the peak of a suicidal crisis, while "Plumbum" names the suffocating weight of a life collapsing in public view.
The song title takes its name from lead, the metal tied to this first stage. So the album’s opening movement makes psychic pain feel dense, slow and difficult to carry.
Rydlevskaya has built her practice in Poland after leaving Belarus following the 2020 political crisis. She works across dark electronic music, experimental pop and pagan motifs, and she creates in Belarusian, English and French.
Her three albums since 2023, When I Can’t Speak, Mugwort and Snake Charmer, have passed one million streams in total. That history gives "Alchemia" a clear place in an already active catalogue.
It also gives the album’s insistence on self-definition added force.
Rydlevskaya wrote, produced and recorded "Alchemia" in her bedroom without label, management or PR involvement. She handled most of the mixing and mastering, then invited Aliaksandr Karneichuk, known as KorneJ, to give the final polish.
This practical independence mirrors the album’s central argument about boundaries and authorship. Instead of treating autonomy as a slogan, the record makes it part of its construction.
Her prior work has also drawn on mental health and self-acceptance, using a distinctive rhythmic language and recognizable vocal polyphony. Here, that background supports a voice that refuses polite containment.
The production moves through minimalism associated with Steve Reich, harsh dark trip-hop linked to the Bristol school, cold cavernous tribal rhythms and high-speed acid techno.
These forms do not serve as decoration. They mark shifts in the heroine’s condition. Sparse repetition can hold a mind in suspension, while acid techno’s speed can sharpen confrontation.
Meanwhile, tribal rhythms give the record a ritual pull that suits its pagan imagery. Rydlevskaya’s vocal polyphony adds another layer of interior pressure.
It suggests a self speaking in more than one register as the album’s conflicts deepen.
Albedo and Calcinatio turn the record away from collapse and toward anger. On the Belarusian-language Pusteča, Rydlevskaya frames aggression as an exit from victimhood.
The track exposes an abuser who remains caught in his own emotional cold. "Snow Queen" takes that response further. Fire and ashes consume an earlier self, while isolation hardens into protection.
Anastasia Rydlevskaya Planned A Four-Stage "Alchemia"
This is not a plea for easy healing. Instead, the album treats anger as a boundary, then asks what kind of strength that boundary can produce.
Citrinitas brings public confrontation. "Your Woman" and "I’m Freaking Crazy" reject external validation and self-deprecating love. In Did You Tell Her?, intimate memories become instruments for a direct reckoning with hypocrisy.
The writing therefore moves shame out of secrecy and into speech. That motion recalls a four-panel altarpiece, where each panel carries a separate burden but the sequence acquires meaning through accumulation.
Rydlevskaya does not promise comfort. She gives the heroine permission to name what hurt her, and to refuse the demand for gentleness.
"Rubedo" completes the arc with "Lilith". Rydlevskaya draws on Jungian Shadow integration, the Wild Woman figure and the historical punishment of feminine rage.
"Lilith" does not wait for pardon or magical correction. She claims justice, speech and the right to set boundaries. For listeners drawn to experimental pop and dark electronic music, "Alchemia" offers a tightly conceived act of reclamation.
It courts people who welcome emotional risk. Its question is not survival after betrayal. It asks what a person can become after rejecting the role betrayal assigns.
https://open.spotify.com/album/7sIBBw7UcUegsrsBeVFiw9
