Everything Before Visions

The Nightmusic EP came out in late 2011 as a collaboration between Grimes and the Montreal producer d’Eon, and it sounds like something assembled in a room with no windows. Hazy, hovering somewhere between ambient and pop, built from textures that dissolve before you can name them. Claire Boucher was still operating at a frequency the mainstream couldn’t quite receive—this was before Visions, before she became the figure everyone would argue about for the next decade. There’s something irreplaceable about that version of her: half-formed, strange, already completely herself.