Black Dahlia is an UK-born and Australian based experimental musician and performance artist whose work blurs the boundaries between theatre, sound, and surreal spectacle.
She creates a captivating quirkiness that casts a colourful shadow in the experimental music scene, with performances often compared to artists such as Peter Gabriel and Klaus Nomi.
Her creations exist in dreamlike spaces where masks, characters, and worlds collide; flamboyant, avant-garde expressions that draw as much from performance art, mime, and surrealism as they do from music itself.
Whether inhabiting strange personas on stage or building vast sonic landscapes, Black Dahlia conjures universes that feel both alien and intimately human, inviting her audience to step into the unknown.
Her forthcoming album “The Imposter”, die for release October 7th 2025 via her own imprint School of Dahlia, is a theatrical concept record that unfolds like a surreal stage play.
Written, produced, arranged and performed by Black Dahlia, it follows a lone wanderer, the Imposter, who chases an enigmatic light away from a distant paradise, only to find himself lost between realms, drifting through an interstellar limbo of time and strange encounters.
His arrival on Earth reveals a fractured, expressionist world where he struggles to adapt, wears many masks, and ultimately erupts into a new form [the Amphibian Man], before facing the harsh truth that rebirth is the only escape.
The album’s mesmeric electronic-soaked lead single, “On The Run,” offers the first glimpse into this dreamlike odyssey. Here, the Imposter is suspended in the liminal space between paradise and earth, chasing meaning while pursued by shadows of his own making. The track captures the vastness and isolation of his journey, a restless search for freedom haunted by masks, theatre, and the fear of never belonging.
Musically, The Imposter embraces a brave fusion of science fiction, surrealism, Bauhaus, prog’, mime, and German Expressionism; art forms colliding in a universe that exists entirely on its own terms.
“This is not an album that explains itself; it is a dream committed to vinyl, a work of heart and vision that asks to be entered and experienced in full.” [The outer and inner artwork mirror this duality: one world folding into another.]
Black Dahlia has previously been recognised for her fearless artistry. Her 2024 single “Bodyguard” earned ABC Rage’s “Wild One” award and screened at SXSW Sydney Screen Festival.
She has also collaborated with artists including Rebel Yell on “TNT”, and contributed original compositions to film projects such as “Let The Blind Lead Those Who Cannot See”.
Now, with The Imposter, Black Dahlia expands her vision into something “vast, theatrical, and unflinchingly brave.”
This world will be brought to life through performance: an Australian tour in December 2025, followed by a European and UK tour in early 2026.
Photos by Anne Thu Pham [assisted by George Popov]
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