Camilla Sparksss - ICU RUN
On the Camper / Modulor
Released on September 12th, 2025
2025 has been an interesting year for Canadian pop music from the likes of the more mainstream artists such as The Weekend and Tate McRae to the more experimental acts such as Debby Friday, Devours, and Saya Gray. Add to the list of experimental pop: Camilla Sparksss.
Barbara Lehnhoff (aka. Camilla Sparksss) is a Swiss-Canadian electro-noise pop musician and visual artist based out of Kenora, Ontario. In 2005, Lehnhoff cofounded the post-punk and art rock band Peter Kernel with long-time collaborator, Aris Bassetti. Since 2013, she adopted the pseudonym Camilla Sparksss to explore her own artistic vision and experimentation with continued collaboration from Bassetti for writing and recording. Since her debut album For You the Wild (2014) until now, Sparksss’ sound has gone through various stages of experimentation and refinement. For You the Wild, for example, has this more darkwave and electropunk orientation, whereas her sophomore album Brutal (2022) incorporates more elements of pop and electropop production while retaining the darkwave and industrial inclinations from the first release.
With this context, I think I want to stress that if you haven’t tuned in to Camilla Sparksss, now is the time. Her last album ICU RUN is a considerable achievement in her creative development where you can see the most polished iteration of what she has been doing since 2013. ICU RUN is admittedly a vulnerable album beneath its experimental shroud, as Sparksss intimates into the experience of losing her father, who spent his final months trying to escape the confines of an ICU.
ICU RUN kicks off with the track “Holy Shit” which immediately gets at its emotional heresy and sonic intensity progressing from a dry vocal performance of distorted plucked strings to eventually get at a heavily sidechained 808s and choppy percussions overtaking the mix. This aesthetically captivates an underlying theme in this album which Sparksss describes that she aimed “to reflect the feeling of losing control but still clinging to life,” contrasting the now seemingly soothing strings to the disruptive drums musicalizing the lyrics “i don’t wanna see your face no more / fuck your shrine.” “I Like The Noise” starts with a stripped down bass instrumental with dry vocals delivering the catchy irreverent lyrics as more instrumental elements are introduced into a fuller drum and bass sound and lightly effected vocals. As the song complicates its compositional structure, so do the lyrics as the erotic sensuality of the track shows its cracks of vulnerability edging on self-destruction.
“Stranger” carries onwards the rhythmic and emotional pace of the album with a hypnotic industrial spoken-word track, which again contrasts the lack of care with a passing moment of shaken self-certainty. “Damage” delivers an electropunk track continuing to explore the themes of uncommitted promiscuity. At times, the track dynamically sets the instrumental and vocals into a call and response dialogue bringing the loss in the flux of one hotel room to another into an abrupt stop when Sparksss asks “can’t you hear the voices?” “Stormseeker” offers more of an 80s modulated and reverbed mix exploring the tensions and contradiction of a cycle of pain finding its way back to pleasure. “Backflip” turns things around to an industrial and acid electronica song introducing a bit of multilinguality through play of feminine masquerade which returns in “Amami Tu.” “Amami Tu” goes full Euro EDM with an Italian track featuring Francesco Bianconi who enters into this sensual back and forth with Sparksss about bewildering, playful, and joyful sex.
The album finishes with perhaps the highlight of the whole record: “Fatherless.” This track epitomizes the underlying narrative behind the album with Sparksss feeling out the contradiction of mourning and sacreligiousness, claiming herself as her own daughter as if to break her familial ties nonetheless having this sense that she is running in circles. Musically, this track is a beast to be reckoned with. Again, we start with dry vocals that establish the theme as slowly some of the softer instrumental elements come in only for an uptick in energy leading up to a deconstructed electronic beat. When I first heard this drop, I was driving to Saskatchewan with my friend Piper. We both had to stop on our tracks to play it from the start with the volume blasting, because god, it hits so hard. This is the best track I’ve heard from Camilla Sparksss full stop. Comparable to songs like FKA twigs’ “Drums of Death” and Arca’s “Señorita,” Sparksss manages to leave a lasting impact by topping off the album with this.
This is certainly not your mom’s pop. It has the experimental edge that has characterized a lot of what is now known as hyperpop. With production and mixing choices evocative of acts like Arca, Skrillex, Robyn, FKA twigs, and Sega Bodega, Camilla Sparksss has delivered one of the most interesting albums to come out in Canada this year. This is all to say: Camilla Sparksss has been kind of a sleeper agent in the Canadian and North American music scene, getting more traction among European audiences due a supportive role in A Place to Bury Strangers’ European tour in 2023 to the overt ease of access for her touring as an artist in Europe. Again, if you haven’t tuned in to Camilla Sparksss, do it now.
