Laurel Halo (No 1,028)

Hometown: Brooklyn.

The lineup: Ina Cube (music, production).

The background: Friday's new artist featured in this column because she is a sales phenomenon in certain parts of the globe. Today's act is here because the textures and tones in her music seem to reflect the ever-shifting nature of phenomena and the phenomena of nature. The one interests us for reasons of biography, the other mesmerises because of the quality of her sound.

That isn't to suggest that she's not an interesting character in her own right; far from it. A 25-year-old electronic composer from Iggy Pop's home town of Ann Arbor born Ina Cube, she says she took the name Laurel Halo because it "reminds me of the video game, and the infinite. And it's fun to have a pseudonym." As a child she learned classical piano, and has spent time in various orchestras, improv ensembles and noise groups – and you can tell from her latest EP, a collection of slowly evolving soundscapes that are roughly what you imagine Jon Hassell's Fourth World albums might sound like: a blur or blend of ambient and electronic, avant-garde composition and jazz fluidity, and rhythms that could as easily emanate from Africa as they could from an unknown place in space.

It comes as no surprise that this former freeform college radio DJ – that is to say, she played freeform music over the waves at college, not that she indulged in a strange process of shape-shifting – has a fondness for sci-fi and likes to bring ideas from that area to bear on her music. Why? Because in sci-fi "you are always presented with what's outside your current field of vision – your cultural situation, and technological capabilities – and I like thinking about what exists outside of your range of vision".

If you think Ms Halo sounds a tad on the cerebral side, we'd have to agree. Currently dating Mr Brainy himself, Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never, she sees music in terms of shapes – "domes, arcs, webs" – and relates how early exposure to systems music innovator Steve Reich "totally shattered the concept of expectation in my head". Elsewhere she talks about the influence of everything from Detroit techno to "the asymptotic quantification of memory". Her songs are mainly instrumental and there are whispers or vapour trails of tweaked or treated voices, leading some to liken her to the ghost of Kate Bush, but she's more My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

The opening track on her EP, Aquifer, is all Can-style polyrhythms and Oneohtrix pan-tronica. This is music that reveals itself gradually, that opens out before your eyes, leaving lasting impressions on your retina. Constant Index could be the soundtrack to a futuristic movie in which Tom Cruise runs from an unknown cyber assailant while reflecting on the female operative with whom he's suddenly been thrown together. Head is seven minutes of static, drones and interference that suggests 23 Skidoo's avant-voodoo engulfed by an ash cloud. Speed of Rain is powerfully percussive without being oppressive and features a scintilla of acoustic and a shard of the symphonic, like flicking through a radio dial and briefly alighting on different stations. Finally, Hour Logic communicates wonder and wondrousness with music that induces a Pacific State. Prepare to bliss out, and for after-shocks.

The buzz: "One of our favourite breakthrough artists of the year" – factmag.com.

The truth: Think Oxygene for Brooklyn hipsters.

Most likely to: Appear mirage-like on the event horizon.

Least likely to: Do an ambient version of Search and Destroy.

What to buy: The EP Hour Logic is released on 21 June by Hippos in Tanks.

File next to: Glasser, Oneohtrix Point Never, 808 State, Can.

Links: myspace.com/laurelhalo.

Tuesday's new band: Michael Kiwanuka.