Every once in a while, a debut project comes along that doesn’t just introduce an artist—it announces them. Vancouver-based multi-instrumentalist Vallen Koscheev has done just that with Not Today Old Friend, the debut EP from his solo project Rolla’s, released on July 1, 2025. A haunting, beautiful, and at times delightfully jagged journey through emotional fatigue, social performance, and existential perspective, this five-track collection is equal parts intimate confession and sonic experiment.
Rolla’s doesn’t fit neatly into any box, and that’s exactly the point. Not Today Old Friend is a dizzying cocktail of math rock precision, slowcore melancholy, emo transparency, and ambient-electronic texture. Koscheev draws influence from artists like Pretend, Jean Jean, and Devon Welsh, but there’s also a distinct fingerprint here—something raw and unrehearsed, as if we’re overhearing a stream of consciousness dressed up in fractured guitars and synth haze.
The opening track, Holidays Are Just Around The Corner, sets the tone immediately. It’s wistful, but not naïve; melodic, but with jagged edges that refuse to smooth over. Over layered guitar lines and scattered rhythmic jolts, Koscheev sings like someone holding it together just long enough to get through the next moment. The track wrestles with the optimism we’re expected to feel around holidays and the very different, complex feelings that can sit just beneath the surface. Friendship and distance—both physical and emotional—are key themes here, as the song folds inward on itself like a letter you never sent but kept reading.
That emotional contrast bleeds perfectly into track two, Sitting Here Depressed When I’m Surrounded By The Happiest People In The World. The title alone is a thesis on the alienation of modern social dynamics, and the music more than lives up to it. Built around disjointed chords and flickering electronic accents, it’s a slow build of unease and inner monologue. You can hear the influence of slowcore giants, but with a digital twist that makes it feel deeply now. Koscheev doesn’t just talk about sadness—he sonically architects it, giving it form and motion.
Then comes Let’s Go To The Old Mill Anyway To Get Some Cider, a title that reads like a nostalgic text message and sounds like a lo-fi daydream drenched in delay. This is the EP’s most cinematic moment, a kind of coming-of-age interlude filled with nervous laughter, half-remembered conversations, and a soundtrack that sounds like falling asleep in the backseat while your friends drive you home. There’s an underlying melancholy, but also something beautifully ordinary. It captures the sacred in the mundane—an anthem for people who still believe in small, significant nights.
Track four, This Omniscient Point Of View Has Some Bonuses, is the EP’s most musically adventurous piece. With erratic time signatures and unexpected chord changes, it nods to the math rock spirit at the core of Rolla’s. But this isn’t math rock for the sake of complexity—it’s emotional storytelling in asymmetrical shapes. Lyrically, Koscheev meditates on detachment and perspective, playing with the idea that seeing everything doesn’t necessarily mean understanding anything. There’s a wryness to it, a sense of humor buried under existential dread. It’s that push-pull of lightness and gravity that keeps the track afloat.
The final track, Father Of The Year, Pal, Father Of The Year, brings the EP to a close with devastating grace. It’s stripped-back compared to the others—more direct, more painful. The title drips with sarcasm, but the song itself is honest, tender, and wounded. As Koscheev’s vocals crack and flutter through the mix, you can feel the weight of what’s unspoken. The guitars swell and retreat like memory waves, and by the time the last note rings out, it feels like something has changed—even if we’re not sure what.
Not Today Old Friend is more than a debut EP—it’s a map of emotional survival. Koscheev doesn’t offer solutions or resolutions. Instead, he creates space for listeners to feel seen in their confusion, their longing, their contradictions. It’s the sound of someone working through their own story in real time, and inviting you to do the same.
Rolla’s isn’t trying to be cool, polished, or market-ready. What Vallen Koscheev has made instead is something braver and more lasting: a record that’s not afraid to sit in discomfort, to ask hard questions, and to hold up a cracked mirror to what we think we know about ourselves and others.
With Not Today Old Friend, Rolla’s has entered the scene not with a whisper, but with a quiet, gorgeous storm. Keep your eyes—and your ears—on this one.
