Lil Ugly Mane, the onetime underground rap iconoclast who’s taken a turn toward free-floating lo-fi indie rock, has been going through an intense period lately. This past summer, Lil Ugly Mane wrote a lot of troubling things in since-deleted Instagram posts and then cancelled a planned US tour. He did, however, play one show, at Austin’s Oblivion Access fest, and I happened to be there. In front of a fired-up crowd, Lil Ugly Mane went back to his rap roots, projecting serous strength and leading a raucous singalong. Now, he’s released his first new music since all of that.

Over the past few years, Lil Ugly Mane has come out with a lot of depressive, genre-agnostic music on Bandcamp. Many of those releases have been just a track or two, though he did drop the 19-song LP Volcanic Bird Enemy And The Voiced Concern in 2021. Today, Lil Ugly Mane has followed “Ricochet,” a one-off single that came out in January, with the new tracks “Orange Over” and “Spill.” They’re pretty heavy.

On the seven-minute “Orange Over,” Lil Ugly Mane sings in a muffled baritone over waves of acoustic guitar and drum machines. There’s so much echo on his voice that I can’t make out much of what he’s singing, and the track ends with a recorded phone conversation that must have some context that I can’t grasp. On the much shorter acoustic song “Spill,” Lil Ugly Mane sings about a bad argument: “All the knowledge you’re actively hurting me/ Cranks like a thunder you’ll just misconstrue.” Listen to both tracks below.

“Orange Over” b/w “Spill” is out now and available at Bandcamp.