Magnet Brain Wins Obscure Agency’s Emerging Artist Award at the 2025 Berlin Music Video Awards
In partnership with Obscure Agency
By Kara Markley
The Berlin Music Video Awards have long been a meeting point for boundary-pushing visionaries and global storytelling. The 2025 edition kept that promise. The festival’s highest honor, Best Music Video, went to Cero Ismael for “DRIVING AROUND LOOKING FOR UNKNOWN,” a music video that blurred the lines between cinema and sound.
But another name stole attention during the ceremony: Magnet Brain, the Mongolian artist behind the audiovisual work “Soul Mantra”.
Based in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian artist took home two important awards: the BMVA’s Best Song award for Soul Mantra and Best Emerging Artist, a moment underscored by a deep dive into her world.
More Than a Name
Magnet Brain doesn’t describe her work in terms of genre, nor does she separate disciplines. She operates in a space where visual art, music, ritual, and identity converge seamlessly and intentionally. And the name itself carries that energy.
“So in my mind, if I want it, I got it,” she explained. “The name is the whole meaning. If you really want to do it, you can.”
A Singular Artistic Language
Based in Ulaanbaatar, Magnet Brain works across sound, movement, visual composition, and space. With a background in directing and sound design, her projects often exist between disciplines, constructed through breath, repetition, silence, and structure.
Each element is deliberate: the music shaped through layered textures and restraint, the visuals composed with focus and negative space. She frequently treats voice not as a storytelling tool, but as a raw sonic layer, shifting between melodic fragments and abstract phrasing. The result is immersive, precise, and emotionally charged.
Soul Mantra: Precision, Tension, and Release
Soul Mantra, the work that earned her the Best Song award, is a striking example of her vision. Built on minimal electronic production and symbolic imagery, it avoids ornament in favor of tension. The piece speaks through contrast, structure and vulnerability, clarity and absence.
While the video circulated widely, it was another piece, Tsuutan, that Magnet Brain chose to perform live at the BMVA awards ceremony. The performance carried the same aesthetic vocabulary: quiet intensity, stark visuals, and ritual movement. On stage, she remained faithful to her practice of creating atmosphere rather than spectacle, drawing the audience into her world without demanding attention.
Rooted, Not Confined
Though deeply formed by Mongolian culture and sonic heritage, Magnet Brain’s work does not position itself as traditional. Her earlier releases, such as Fakini and Strings of Stress, draw from alternative R&B, ambient pop, and experimental sound design, showcasing a range that moves confidently across genres.
She doesn’t aim for universality. Instead, she builds specificity so rich it becomes resonant across borders. Her projects don’t explain themselves; they unfold, unfold again, and linger.
Last Release
Magnet Brain’s latest single, Enough is Enough, dives confidently into the territory of modern R&B, reaffirming that this isn’t a stylistic departure, it’s an essential part of her sonic identity.
The track unfolds over a slow, deliberate groove, produced, mixed, and mastered by Alagui Egorov, and accompanied by a clean, emotionally restrained visual directed by Roma Shaglanov. Released with the tagline “she didn’t break, she became untouchable”, the song positions itself as both a statement and a release.
Thematically, it follows the emotional through-line of previous tracks like Fakini and Strings of Stress, where R&B sensibility meets electronic clarity and early-2000s tonal influences. But here, the message is more focused, the delivery more distilled. It’s a track that speaks softly, but with finality.
If Soul Mantra revealed the symbolic, ceremonial side of Magnet Brain’s world, Enough is Enough shows what happens when that energy is condensed into a direct, personal narrative. Still precise. Still controlled. Just closer to the skin.
Emerging Artist Award
For the 2025 edition of the Berlin Music Video Awards, Obscure Agency joined the event as an official media partner, a recognition dedicated to spotlighting one rising voice whose work carries both originality and artistic direction.
The selection was made from a shortlist of candidates proposed by the BMVA team. Among the names, one stood out immediately. Magnet Brain’s sound, visuals, and conceptual clarity left no doubt. For Elnoir, the choice was instinctive and undeniable.
To mark the occasion, the award was accompanied by a handmade trophy.
Obscure Agency remains committed to amplifying artists who speak with intention and to creating space for emerging talent to be seen, heard, and remembered.