Victoryland - No Cameras
- 1Victoryland - No Cameras
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Open edition
Victoryland is the Brooklyn-based project of musician Julian McCamman. His label-debut, My Heart Is A Room With No Cameras In It, out January 23, 2026 via Good English, is a triumphant, despondent, and ultimately fun experimental pop-rock album. Victoryland started in Philly 2023 with the release of tape, Sprain, which echoed more of what the Philly scene was dishing out: lo-fi, tape-recorded rock with a capital R. It was the collaborative efforts of producer Dan Howard that brought the new vision and sound into full focus.Dan and Julian previously worked on Julian’s now-defunct Texas-to-Philly based band, Blood’s Loving You Backwards LP, a collaborative effort between six bandmates. That experience pushed Julian toward a more personal process of recording, starting with home demos and then bringing them to Dan to shape into songs. This relationship ultimately led Julian to move to NYC.
The sound of the album, recorded between Julian’s Bed Stuy basement and Dan’s Williamsburg studio, is the sound of a bright and beaming collaboration. Landing somewhere between lo-fi and hi-fi production, the songs have the glossiness of a radio-friendly hit mixed with the distortion and rough edges of a home demo. Every song keeps at least one element of the initial recording, while building around the loops and half-songs Julian scrapped together. The lyrics on the record span from humorous self-aware popisms (“‘you and I’ will soon be, used to be ‘us’”) to crushing realities of bitterness(“i’ll never forgive you, that’s how I keep you close”) to abstract imagery (“mothers wave from doorways, in ostinato”), all delivered with such an immediacy and fervor that in the middle of singing along, you wonder if this guy slept much last night.
My Heart wrangles with heavy subject matter (love, disconnection, sexual frustration, emptiness etc.), but the terminal statement of the record is about the cleansing nature of pop music. That, if a song can force you to “bliss out” over a hook or a loop, or even make you dance, it can be the spoonful of sugar to swallow the hard pill with; this is what Victoryland strives to do: package the most exhausting realities of life, love, and the search for connection in a world starved of it, into a fun 2-5 minutes, and for the runtime of Victoryland’s first major statement, you might even feel like you’re not alone.
The sound of the album, recorded between Julian’s Bed Stuy basement and Dan’s Williamsburg studio, is the sound of a bright and beaming collaboration. Landing somewhere between lo-fi and hi-fi production, the songs have the glossiness of a radio-friendly hit mixed with the distortion and rough edges of a home demo. Every song keeps at least one element of the initial recording, while building around the loops and half-songs Julian scrapped together. The lyrics on the record span from humorous self-aware popisms (“‘you and I’ will soon be, used to be ‘us’”) to crushing realities of bitterness(“i’ll never forgive you, that’s how I keep you close”) to abstract imagery (“mothers wave from doorways, in ostinato”), all delivered with such an immediacy and fervor that in the middle of singing along, you wonder if this guy slept much last night.
My Heart wrangles with heavy subject matter (love, disconnection, sexual frustration, emptiness etc.), but the terminal statement of the record is about the cleansing nature of pop music. That, if a song can force you to “bliss out” over a hook or a loop, or even make you dance, it can be the spoonful of sugar to swallow the hard pill with; this is what Victoryland strives to do: package the most exhausting realities of life, love, and the search for connection in a world starved of it, into a fun 2-5 minutes, and for the runtime of Victoryland’s first major statement, you might even feel like you’re not alone.