Ken Krantz | Issue 12, Fall 2026

CONTENT NOTE: This album review discusses using musical expression as a means of reclaiming the spiritual and supernatural.

occulto 001, a masterwork by Kentucky-Latin art-pop visionary Cain Culto and co-producer Cary Singer, is a spellbinding, bilingual testament to the vibrancy of radical Queerness. The EP is also a viscerally expressive reclamation of the supernatural.

A former evangelical worship leader, Culto uses occulto 001 to brilliantly reposition the occult as a necessary shadow sanctuary for the spiritually displaced. The music demands collaboration between the sacred and the profane; liberation plays out in beats, bluegrass, and the metallic scrape of a knife. Building on the sound, the video for “KFC Santeria” grows this unique sound into a visual aesthetic, offering ritual, pride, and a well-positioned critique of capitalism’s extractive tendencies.

Overall, occulto 001 provides a fiercely loving blueprint for reclaiming your identity in community on the dance floor. Sparkling in glitch-laced electronic friction, occulto 001 is an essential listen for anyone looking to party in two worlds at once.