Untold
False Vacuum
Hemlock

Untold is back. That in and of itself is great news, as Hemlock Recordings founder Jack Dunning was not only one of post-dubstep’s most consequential figures during the late 2000s and early 2010s, but someone who abruptly disappeared from the scene more than a decade ago. The question of what he was doing during that extended hiatus has now been solved, but now that the UK producer has unexpectedly returned to fray, there’s another, much thornier question to be asked:

Does he still have the goods?

His HEK036 EP, which dropped earlier this year (and snagged a First Floor recommendation) was certainly a positive indicator, but the latest Untold offering, False Vacuum, is even better. Though it’s not a straight-up throwback to the post-dubstep era, what it does share with that time is an enthusiastic embrace of hybridity. The rolling grooves of opening cut “Last Day of the Bluebells,” for instance, sound like something Carl Craig might have cooked up in the early ’90s, even as its thudding bass tones—which grow thicker and thicker as the track proceeds—pay homage to the physicality of soundsystem culture.

Elsewhere, Dunning employs a more freewheeling drum attack. The typewriter-like percussion of “Three Finger Test” recalls the manic euphoria of Joe’s “Claptrap”—a post-dubstep classic in its own right—though the song’s oozy basslines and wooshing sound design also give it something of a sinister underbelly. That darkness also permeates “Eyeballed,” an upfront, high-stepping tune that been adorned with eerie music box melodies and somehow manages to make its recurring, one-word vocal sample sound both sludgy and downright ominous. (The word, for those who are curious, is “operator.”)

The vocal clips are significantly longer on “Lyall’s Wren,” but on that track, they’ve been processed to sound like they were recorded via a landline sometime around 1997. Fellow low-end alchemists Moin often employ a similar technique in their music, but while they generally prefer to play with guitar sounds and the post-hardcore canon, Untold sticks to the club, populating the song with smacking drum hits and warbling, dubstep-adjacent basslines.

Closing number “Worse Than I Thought” is really the only part of False Vacuum where Dunning takes a few steps back from the dancefloor, though its moody chords and lurching, blown-out drum hits do evoke the bleary-eyed sensation one feels after logging a few too many hours at the club. Untold himself might not be going out much these days, but the man has a deep well of experience to draw upon, and if his new EP communicates anything—aside from the fact that his production talents are very much intact—it’s that he hasn’t forgotten the trajectory of a long night out.

Sub Basics & Pugilist
Control
Ruff Kutz

Dubstep will likely forever be associated with the UK, but during the genre’s resurgence over the past few years, at least some control over its trajectory has been wrested away from the British Isles. Even so, Australia feels like an unlikely hotbed of low-end pressure. Now, full-moon forest raves—or, as the Aussies call them, bush doofs? Those make sense down under, as do the tripped-out breakbeats and prog psychedelia that often soundtrack those kinds of parties. But dubstep? And especially deep dubstep? It’s significantly harder to imagine the average Antipodean worshipping at the altar of moody bassweight.

Pugilist, however, is not the average Australian resident. Though he now lives in Melbourne, he actually came of age in New Zealand, which perhaps explains his long-standing affinity for muted tones and cloudy textures. Having spent years mucking about in the bass-centric end of the electronic music landscape, dub has pretty much always been staple element of his creative output, but he’s recently tightened his focus even further, honing in on slow-brewing sounds and the weighty depth of first-wave dubstep.

His Found Sound album—which dropped just a few months ago and also snagged a First Floor recommendation—is probably the best document of where Pugilist’s head is currently at, but he’s now quickly followed it up with the Control EP. A collaborative EP with UK producer Sub Basics, it’s perhaps a testament to the fact that regardless of where they come from, dubstep’s most promising talents often get sucked into Britain’s orbit. But on a purely musical level, it’s also a potent collection of low-end steppers.

The tumbling drums of “20-25” kick things off, laying the groundwork for the song’s woozily gliding melodies and persistent cloud of reverb, while “Strings” charts a more patient course, its bulbous rhythms bubbling away as the two producers allow their squeaky, reverb-encrusted melodies to drift off and dissolve into the atmosphere. Despite its title, “Control” might actually be the most free-floating track on the EP, complete with weightless warbles (and vocal clips) that drag the proceedings toward dub techno. And then there’s “Depth Charge”; a more drum-forward cut, it might technically qualify as the record’s lone bruiser, yet it also seems to filter every bass note and drum strike through a warm cloud of elegant echoes.

Nearly two decades after dubstep took an ill-advised turn toward buzzsaw sonics and EDM-style compositions that usually had about as much subtlety as a sledgehammer to the face, an EP like Control is a clear sign that the genre has somehow found its way back to a better (and far less ridiculous) place. Pugilist isn’t driving that change alone—and neither is Sub Basics—but slow and steamy grooves that populate their new record are something that like-minded producers will surely be examining in close detail.

Efdemin
Mirror Phase
Dekmantel UFO Series

Honest question: When was the last time that Efdemin released a bad record, or even a mediocre one? The German techno veteran has long been one of the genre’s most reliable talents, and though he tends to maintain a relatively low profile, the sheer quality of his output speaks loud and clear.

Mirror Phase is his debut outing on Dekmantel’s UFO Series imprint, and in contrast to last year’s POLY album, which charted a heady course as it oscillated between club-ready sounds and more headphone-oriented fare, this new EP is a taut and explicitly floor-focused effort. The drums ride high in the mix, the rhythms are sturdy and they move with a sense of purpose.

Efedmin conceptualized Mirror Phase as a sort of love letter to techno, and the genre’s longstanding exchange between Detroit and Berlin in particular. On the record’s steadily bubbling title track (which opens the EP), he even enlists the voice of Motor City icon DJ Minx, pulling a sample of the spoken-word intro she contributed to Kevin Saunderson’s X-Mix back in 1997. Her celestial words—which quite literally speak of “ascension,” “transformation,” “transition” and “teleportation”—pair beautifully with the song’s delicate strings and rippling chords, tapping into the uniquely interdimensional spirit of Detroit dance music.

With its floaty atmospherics and rubbery grooves, “Unity Grain” exudes a similarly space-age feel, harkening back to Red Planet and other projects from the more buoyant corners of the UR catalog. “FS1R” and “Slip,” however, have a bit more edge; the former outfits its insistent thump with a myriad of unintelligibly tweaked and twisted vocal clips, while the latter is adorned with crunchy synths that jump around like a downed power line. Efdemin may be known as one of techno’s more thoughtful purveyors, but he clearly still knows how to bang it out, and while Mirror Phase was inspired by the founders who came before him, its creator is someone who also sits in rarefied air.

Cry
AD 140
Self-released

Cry is a band. NYC-based producers Kilbourne and Relaxer made that specifically clear when they announced their new project’s debut EP, but AD 140 almost immediately hammers the point home, unleashing a torrent of swirling industrial techno that they’ve adorned with the same sort of snarling growls and feverish yelps one often finds in the hardcore realm. That’s hardcore as in hardcore punk, and Relaxer (a.k.a. Daniel Martin-McCormick) has spent a sizable chunk of his life in that circuit, most prominently in the Dischord-affiliated art-punk band Black Eyes.

Those wanting a more detailed trip through Martin-McCormick’s past can check out his First Floor interview from last year, but Cry shouldn’t be mistaken for a nostalgia trip. Neither member has previously done anything that sounds quite like this, and aside from maybe the “digital hardcore” experiments that Atari Teenage Riot was cooking up back in the 1990s, there aren’t many historical parallels to point at either. That contextual void does make for some fun hypotheticals—imagine Surgeon collaborating with Black Flag, for instance—but it’s fair to say that Cry are carving out their own lane in the contemporary music landscape.

That lane, however, does march straight through the dancefloor, even as songs like “Summer” and “Like Fat Across Meat” find the two artists alternately howling and hissing, their unrelenting (and borderline demonic) vocalizations fortified by the percussive fury of the underlying techno rhythms. In truth, “rhythms” almost feel like the wrong word; although AD 140 is undeniably body music, it feels less like an exercise in groove and more like an all-out assault, or perhaps a chaos-infused call to arms, one that—unlike much of today’s formulaic electronic offerings—will make it all but impossible for anyone in earshot to stand still with their arms crossed.

“Leach” does offer a brief respite from the bedlam, temporarily muting the vocal onslaught and instead delving into a hypnotically pulsing techno wormhole. On its own, it almost sounds like an old Audion track—and an excellent one at that—but in the context of AD 140, it’s an unexpected outlier, a palette cleanser between the thundering drum & bass / dubstep hybrid “Leash” and the whirling, guitar-driven maelstrom of EP closer “Sapling Youth.”

Cry won’t be for everyone, but their unapologetic prickliness is a big part of what makes AD 140 such an invigorating work. It’s anything but a lean-back listen, and in a time when so much of electronic music has come to feel both easily digestible and exceedingly polite, there’s something genuinely thrilling about a band that isn’t afraid to march into the club and scream in everyone’s face.

Coloursound
New World
Animalia

At some point during the mid to late 2000s, dubstep went horribly off course. That narrative, repeated ad nauseum by dance music true-schoolers for the better part of the past two decades, has in many ways become a central tenet of the culture. EDM will likely always have its apologists, but these days, even those who were once charmed by the mid-range wobble and arena-ready theatrics of artists like Skrillex, Caspa and Rusko (not to mention the legions that followed in their wake) will often concede that the brostep era represented a significant dumbing down of the genre.

Those concessions haven’t necessarily quieted all of the critics, but anyone who’s still pining for “real” dubstep clearly hasn’t been paying attention during the past few years. With artists like Beatrice M., Carré and Mia Koden leading the way, the genre has plunged back into the meditative murk from which it first emerged, and has once again become a reliable source of slow-burning experiments in low-end pressure. Moreover, it’s done so while shedding much of the insularity that defined its early years.

In other words, dubstep is no longer something that happens almost exclusively in the UK, and that shift has opened up opportunities for artists like Coloursound to put their stamp on the genre. New World is the Naarm / Melbourne-based producer’s debut EP, and it’s an undeniably heady affair, one in which every seemingly wub and wobble has been dipped in a vat of sludgy reverb. Yet the preponderance of bassweight doesn’t prevent Coloursound from crafting nimble rhythms; opening number “Sierra” might be moody, but its underlying drum patterns dart around like insects, lending the track a welcome sense of elasticity.

The clattering percussion on “Liquid” is even more scattershot, though the song’s ruminative atmosphere prevents things from ever spinning out of control. Colorsound appears determined to provide a steady hand, but New World, even in its most measured moments, never feels like an out-and-out exercise in DMZ worship; his tunes are ultimately far too busy for that, and tracks like “Betawaves” and the more brooding “Foresight” are closer to the techno abstractions of someone like Konduku, or the bass mutations you’d expect to hear from labels like Tectonic and Livity Sound.

All that said, New World is most definitely a dubstep record, and a deep one of that. Its mere existence is the latest sign that the genre’s long night in the wilderness has finally come to an end. However, what makes the EP worthwhile is not just its nods to the nuanced sounds of dubstep’s past, but its insistence on refashioning those sounds into something that resonates with dance music’s present.

Martinou
Ever Changing
mule musiq

Ever Changing is an emotional record. Although most Martinou releases deal in tasteful melodies and relatively muted atmospheres, his latest EP pushes that combination into a fully cinematic zone, its soaring pads and tinkling tones perhaps more concerned with catharsis than the late-night dynamics of the dancefloor. Granted, the Swedish producer has never been one to beat listeners over the head with his drum programming; subtlety and slow burns are two of his defining traits, and while that still holds true here, it does feel as though some sort of expressive ceiling has been lifted, freeing Martinou to chart a course into the stratosphere.

On “Untold,” that course even includes the sound of a flute, which he’s apparently returned to for the first time since high school. The song itself is a proper “tears in the rain” experience, its skippy rhythm providing a bit of bounce as Martinou weaves together a tapestry of lush synths, wordless (and wistful) vocalizations and some downright pastoral passages from the aforementioned flute. It’s the sort of thing you might expect to hear toward the end of a Hollywood film, most likely when the main characters have overcome whatever challenges they faced and are now hugging one another as they hopefully look toward the future.

“Through You” and “Multitudes” are more indebted to the club—mostly because they employ a more robust drum patterns—but they ultimately strike a similar tone; the former swaddles its housey chug in elegantly billowing pads, while the latter turns up the volume on its vocals, taking cues from both Enya and the anonymous divas that often populated idyllic prog tunes during the late ’90s. EP closer “Continuum” does bring a surprise hint of darkness into the mix, but it too has an anthemic streak, introducing a drone-like synth that ominously lingers for several minutes—that is, until it suddenly dissolves amid a gleaming array of fluttering melodic tones.

Taking these kinds of big swings is an inherently risky move, and one that frequently results in artists falling flat on their face. Martinou, however, has managed to go big without losing touch with what made his music compelling in the first place. Ever Changing might be ready for the local IMAX, but its sweeping vistas are also more than suitable for an afternoon of feeling emo in the confines of one’s own bedroom.

Gi Gi
In Lieu
Mood Hut

Over the last several years, Gi Gi has become something of a leading figure in the world of modern downtempo music. While the Texas-based artist and DJ’s earliest releases found tentative footholds in pure ambient drift—the saturated, low fidelity glow of OST Circadia making way for the high-definition dreamweaving of Lumino Pieco—it was in the weightless grooves of 2022’s Sunchoke and Lamella Pressed that the project began to find its true shape. These albums arrived to a world only just emerging from lockdown, one with a newfound appreciation for the gentler side of electronic music and the understated bliss of the chillout room, and led the charge for a new wave of dubbed-out downtempo that continues to gain momentum to this day.

With 2024’s Dreamliner, Gi Gi’s name became synonymous with the slow chug and dazed-out nod of the afterhours, but with In Lieu, he leaves the distinction between bedroom and club feeling blurrier than ever. Not entirely a dance record, and yet nearly impossible to sit still to, In Lieu moves with the dreamy air of one waking from a deep slumber and wandering straight into a party, the body leading the way as the mind slowly emerges from a pleasantly delirious fog.

Establishing the album’s sleepy sense of immediacy right from the get-go, the elastic-band snap and sassy sarcasm of album opener “Optimo”—which plays out like the soundtrack to a slow-motion vogueing sequence—is somehow both dramatic and relaxed. Coasting along on this lazy momentum, tracks like “Pink Dirt” and “Some Of” seem to drift within the margins of half consciousness, a sleep-deprived stumble into the morning light in last night’s dress and high heels, held upright by nothing more than an undeniable groove. Though the vibe remains consistent throughout, there are some pleasantly unexpected turns scattered throughout the record; the off-kilter chug of “Going 2” brings to mind the smoked-out, Latin-tinged electronica of DJ Python, while the titular closing track casts a decidedly skyward gaze, its reverb-drenched guitars and whisper-soft vocals retracting the ceiling of the chillout room to reveal an infinite sea of stars.

Dynamic yet entirely unhurried, In Lieu is an album that thrives within its own contradictions, its relaxed pace emphasizing a barely contained internal energy as its steady pulse provides the calm within a dizzyingly kinetic storm.

Eric Cloutier
My Friend the Abyss
Palinoia

“Electrophoresis,” the opening track from Eric Cloutier’s new My Friend the Abyss LP, might be the Platonic ideal of the sound the veteran producer and DJ has been refining for the past decade. The drums have a bit of skip to them, the melody is both weird and catchy, and the track builds into a hypnotic groove that feels like it could go on forever.

This sort of contemporary techno has always been Cloutier’s bread and butter. And indeed, My Friend the Abyss finds him turning in a number of cerebral mind-melters that will likely help keep punters glued to the floor long after they should’ve gone home. (I’m thinking in particular of tracks like “Desassossego” and “Celeste,” where the arpeggio has a hint of ’90s IDM to it.)

At the same time, what’s most exciting about the album is that it also sees Cloutier venturing further afield. “Ligrothism” plays out like the photo negative of a drum & bass track, while “Hävittää” offers up a hypnotically dubby morass. Add in a couple of ambient tunes and My Friend the Abyss most definitely feels like a proper LP, but more importantly, it also shows that Cloutier still has a few new tricks up his sleeve.

FAUZIA
I Was Here for a Moment
Mexican Summer

There’s no doubt that shoegaze and trip-hop have been on a resurgent hot streak in recent years. Along with dream pop and slowcore, these laconic ’90s sounds have aged well, their space and pace standing in stark opposition to the frenetic tempo of the modern age. On her new I Was Here for a Moment EP, FAUZIA (born Fauzia Habib) metabolizes these touchstones into a compact expression that also marks another expansion of her already wide-ranging artistic outlook.

Habib’s roots in footwork-oriented club music feel like a distant memory at this point, and over the past five years or so, the London-based artist has pointedly steered away from the dancefloor toward a more introspective and intimate zone. 2020’s Flashes in Time mixtape was a refreshingly open and exploratory collection of lo-fi vignettes that presaged the sound Habib has now rounded out on I Was Here For A Moment. It’s not often that an artist’s debut on a high-profile indie like Mexican Summer doesn’t even reach the 10-minute mark, but Habib has clearly been nurturing this more subdued approach for some time, and now knows exactly what she wants to say with it.

“Guide” is where the aforementioned trip-hop touchstones come into focus, thanks to a pitch-perfect downtempo break and woozy reversed synth licks. It’s a natural bed for Habib’s airy vocal, which calls to mind Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser and longtime 100% Silk affiliate Maria Minerva in equal measure. “Without Me,” in contrast, has an earthy, new wave sound palette, particularly in its tastefully phased bass guitar, and yet the transition between styles feels barely perceptible thanks to the cohesion in Habib’s songwriting. Adding in the gentle swell of a string arrangement, she rounds out the track with an aching but understated flourish.

From there, the moodier tint and scuffed drums of “I can be anything” and the loungey, soft-focus psychedelia of “Just a dream” evoke images of a dimly lit bar inhabited by lackadaisical dreamers. Even so, there’s such sincerity in Habib’s voice and the words she speaks that the fantasy she’s created remains grounded in something unmistakably real.

Topdown Dialectic
False LP A
False Aralia

Who or what is Topdown Dialectic? Until a few months ago, this was a perfectly reasonable question. For more than a decade, the project had steadily dropped releases—most of them populated only with songs that were exactly five minutes in length—and had done so while A) racking up a growing amount of critical acclaim and B) sharing almost no information about how the music was made or the identity of who’d actually made it. By the time that 2026 rolled around, the curiosity around Topdown Dialectic hadn’t quite reached a “Who is Burial?” level of mania, but within a very specific sector of electronic music (i.e. mostly introverted and very online ambient and dub techno nerds), the mystery surrounding the project had become a persistent topic of conversation.

That mystery, however, has now been solved, as the announcement of False LP A included a voluntary admission that Topdown Dialectic was none other than Izaak Schlossman, an experimental music veteran who’s currently based in San Francisco and is also one half of sophisti-synth-pop duo Loveshadow.

In retrospect, Schlossman was the most likely candidate. The last three Topdown Dialectic albums were issued by Peak Oil, an imprint that’s been beautifully curated by longtime kranky affiliate and DIY jack-of-all-trades Brian Foote. During the past few years, Foote has started up an additional pair of labels, one of which (False Aralia) is devoted entirely to Schlossman’s various musical endeavors. Filled with dubby abstractions and presented with relatively little in the way of supporting context, the False Aralia releases certainly bore a certain resemblance to the work of Topdown Dialectic, but with neither Foote nor Schlossman addressing the matter directly, the aforementioned ambient and dub techno nerds were left to speculate.

With that sort of speculation no longer necessary, will some of the excitement around Topdown Dialectic begin to dissipate? It’s possible, especially considering that between Topdown Dialectic and the steadily growing False Aralia catalog, there is now a true abundance of Schlossman material on offer. At the same time, neither audiences nor critics have so far shown any signs of creeping boredom. The response to False LP A has been extremely positive, with the album drawing rapturous praise from Pitchfork, Boomkat (who, in fairness, are motivated in part by the practical need to move some units), bass god The Bug and even First Floor contributor Ryan Mandelbaum (a.k.a. ghosttropics), who declared directly on the record’s Bandcamp page that it was “very clearly [his] favourite album of the year so far” and that “one day Izaak Schlossman's name will be spoken right next to Robert Henke and Sasu Ripatti.” One can only assume that it won’t be long before the Unsounds and CTMs of the world come calling (if they haven’t already), and though Schlossman almost never performs as Topdown Dialectic—the project’s live debut happened only last year—maybe that’ll change now that he’s revealed his identity to the world.

Without question, the narrative around False LP A is fantastic, but is the record itself any good? Well, of course it is. Truth be told, it’s not all that different from previous Topdown Dialectic efforts, probably because a significant chunk of the album consists of archival material recorded between 2013 and 2016. The tracklist does include some more recent compositions as well, and though no indications have been given about which of 16 songs on offer are old and which ones are new, the consistency of the music renders those distinctions largely meaningless. In simpler terms, anyone who enjoyed the vaporous muck and funk-dotted haze of earlier Topdown Dialectic releases is sure to be satisfied by this latest full-length. Sure, the project continues to take cues from ambient and dub techno, but at the end of the day, it’s too kinetic for the former and too unpredictable for the latter, existing in its own, uniquely hypnotic netherworld.

In his Pitchfork review, writer Andrew Ryce nodded to r/TheOverload, a subreddit devoted to “unconventional club music” of all shapes and sizes. That, not surprisingly, provoked a response in that very same forum, and while most of the participating Redditors in the thread seized the chance to gripe about Pitchfork, one user shared the following thoughts:

I don’t really get Topdown Dialectic. I like one or two of the songs but they all just sound like half of a song.

Funnily enough, this person—who’s clearly not a fan—has inadvertently hit upon something that’s not only true, but is at the very core of Topdown Dialectic’s appeal. Schlossman’s compositions aren’t exactly minimal, but they’re never overstuffed; they’re also loopy and repetitive, and he often prefers processed fragments of sound to fleshed-out notes and intelligible vocal phrases. But on a more fundamental level, his music is also just weird. Not weird in a “wear funny clothes, stick a pencil in your ear and get up in front of the class to do a silly dance” way; it’s more that the Topdown Dialectic material seems to blithely (and calmly) defy even the loosely defined convention of experimental music, cruising along at a leisurely speed and sometimes heading towards nowhere in particular.

While False LP A is technically divided into separate songs, those songs feel less like fully formed statements than temporary portals into Schlossman’s understated workflow, not to mention the sparsely populated (albeit undeniably tripped-out) space he prefers to inhabit. To listeners who’ve grown accustomed to the dopamine-on-demand dynamics of streaming platforms, or even the attention-demanding thwacks of an urgent kick-drum pattern, the five minutes that each one of those portals is open might feel like a meandering eternity. Appreciating False LP A does require some serious patience—the album, remember, is literally 80 minutes long—but whether you ruminate on the record’s every detail or surrender yourself to its hazy expanses and reverb-glazed rhythms, what’s perhaps most rewarding is the slow realization that what you’re hearing is the work of someone who’s not just determined to do their own thing, but is deeply content to do so.

Quoting G
I Can Feel It (In My Bones)
Clone Royal Oak

Who is Quoting G? According to the Clone Records gang, the producer is a “long-time label mainstay,” but beyond that, they’re not saying much. If the “G” is any indication, veteran Dutch producer Gerd (a.k.a. NY Stomp, along with many, many other aliases) is a solid candidate, especially since I Can Feel It (In My Bones) deals in the same sort of soulful, early-’90s house music that’s long been one of his primary calling cards.

But that’s just an educated guess, and regardless of who was behind the boards on this record, they’ve put together a rather immaculate collection of tunes. That collection includes four separate versions of the title track: the original, an instrumental, a digital-only “808 Mix” and a a kick drum-free “PERC-A-PELLA.” (That last one is another clue that Gerd might be involved, as he once released a similarly styled—and frankly incredible—“No-Kicks-Re-Interpretation” of NY Finest’s 1993 anthem “Do You Want Me.”)

Still, it’s the original “I Can Feel It (In My Bones)” that shines brightest, its Korg M1 organ notes—which nod to golden-era MK—providing a bouncy counterpoint to the song’s hypnotically lush pads and the melancholy-tinged vocalizations of its unnamed diva. It’s transcendent stuff, and “Please Don’t Leave Me” is nearly as good, employing a sultrier, more ’90s R&B-flavored vocal to complement its punchy, acid-licked groove. We may not know who Quoting G is—and we may never know—but if the project continues to turn out tracks like these, sitting with the mystery will be more than worth it.

Imaabs
Trisomnía
Precious Metals

Trisomnía is a good record, but “Drak”—the marauding number that closes out the EP—is a truly great track. Coming from Chilean-born, Mexico City-based producer (and longtime N.A.A.F.I affiliate) Imaabs, it’s a corroded club smasher, one in which his jackhammering, take-no-prisoners drum attack appears determined to bust through the monotony of the modern dancefloor. With its nimble rhythms and industrial sheen, the song does crib a few notes from Classical Curves-era Jam City, but Imaabs is more inclined to gallop through the murk, complementing his chrome textures with dramatic jump cuts and some eerie sound design.

A similar aesthetic colors the rest of Trisomnía, even as Imaabs largely refrains from putting the pedal to the metal. And speaking of metal, the various clangs and bangs of opening cut “Spec” evoke thoughts of rivets being driven through sheets of aluminum, while the urgent “Umbral” is a mutant reggaeton-jungle hybrid that sounds like it was forged in a vat of molten steel. “Ceho,” on the other hand, offsets its serrated blasts of distortion with spectral, church-ready vocal harmonies, playing out an existential battle between light and darkness with the help of a deconstructed trap beat. Trisomnía may not be an overly friendly record, but it’ll put even the most robust of soundystems through their paces as its gnarled sonics command the attention of everyone in earshot.

Sasha
Hollow Sun
Last Night on Earth

Considering that the current progressive house revival has now been going strong for several years, it’s interesting that Sasha—the artist responsible for some of the genre’s most timeless releases—hasn’t really been embraced by the crowd that’s now salivating over every new release from labels like naff, Kalahari Oyster Cult and Butter Sessions. It’s not that DJs in that cohort aren’t happy to play old Sasha records, but outside of a special back-to-back session with Young Marco at last year’s Dekmantel festival, the man himself is rarely seen in the more tastemaker-driven corners of dance music.

In fairness, that might be Sasha’s choice. Having long ago ascended into the superstar tier, the UK native certainly doesn’t need to cater to the hipster set, and it’s a good bet that his DJ fees are simply too high for even middle-tier bookers to seriously consider. At the same time, one could reasonably expect a bit more reverence for the guy, especially during a time when the culture is all but obsessed with revisiting (and, let’s face it, repurposing) the sounds and aesthetics of the ’90s and early 2000s.

Maybe Hollow Sun will turn the tide. A new two-tracker on Sasha’s own Last Night on Earth imprint, it’s easily the best record he’s made in years (decades?), and though it may not reach the same heights as stone-cold classics like the Xpander EP and his “Scorchio” collaboration with Underworld’s Darren Emerson, it exists in a similar sonic universe. Sun-drenched and tastefully textured, both “Hollow 25” and “Hollow 24”—which are essentially two iterations of the same track—unfold at a relatively leisurely pace, the steady kick drums largely serving as a foundation for Sasha’s filtered chords and billowing melodies.

Of the two songs on offer, “Hollow 25” is the more urgent cut, and the one that weaves in a bit of gurgling acid. Yet it’s on “Hollow 24” where Sasha most closely resembles his vintage best, cranking up the bliss as his cosmic synth tendrils elegantly twist and twirl. While the tune does drift toward the trance zone, it does so without indulging in the formulaic melodrama (e.g. the hands-in-the-air drops) that often characterize the genre’s biggest anthems. In other words, “Hollow 24” is big but never brash, and it’s also a sign that when it comes to top-shelf prog, Sasha still has some gas left in the tank. Let’s see who notices.

Charlie Conway
Rudded
Fixed Rhythms

Nashville has arguably been a music town for more than a century now, but the place has never really be known as a techno hotbed. Sure, Nikki Nair grew up in Knoxville—which, for the record, is nearly 200 miles away—but if you do a quick Google search of “dance music artists from Nashville,” I’m guessing that the results will leave you scratching your head. The city isn’t necessarily to blame for that; country music is obviously the biggest game in town, and the dance music industry / press has long had a hard time looking beyond what’s happening in places like London, Berlin and New York. No matter how much quality techno is actually being produced in the region, it’s fair to say that many of even the most open-minded listeners would probably be skeptical about the idea of a burgeoning scene existing pretty much anywhere in Tennessee.

Rudded, however, just might change their minds. Arriving on Fixed Rhythms—an Oklahoma City label that definitely knows a thing or two about building something outside of dance music’s hype centers—it’s the latest release from Charlie Conway, a guy who, aside from DJing, making music and throwing parties, is also the co-founder of Nashville’s Disctrix venue. More importantly, however, the record is a thumping exercise in bang-the-box techno. Deeply indebted to the raw sounds of Detroit and Chicago (and not far off from what fellow American producers like 1Morning and JR2k have been doing in recent years), the record opens with its title track, an invigorating number that skillfully combines blasts of corroded noise with an insistent—and undeniably funky—groove. On “Zinc,” the sense of mayhem only increases, yet even as Conway serves up gnarled synths and pushes nearly everything into the red, he keeps things firmly on the dancefloor, never allowing his rhythms to fall into a static abyss.

Closing out the EP, “Why Do You” does manage to turn down the distortion, though the track—which clocks in at more than 12 minutes—still has a somewhat crazed energy, its rubbery groove prompting questions like, “What would it sound like if Moodymann was hopped up on way too much Adderall?” Conway clearly likes his techno fast, but listening to Rudded is less like being beaten over the head and more like trying to keep up with an excited kindergartener who’s streaking across the playground. Yes, things can get a little messy, but even if you’re exhausted at the end of the day, you’re going to have a big smile on your face.

Forest on Stasys
Deprogramming of Reality
Delsin

Artists in Latin America don’t just make Latin music. It feels ridiculous to even write something like that, because of course they don’t. Yet if you look around the contemporary electronic music landscape, it often seems that the only Latin artists who find serious traction are those whose work conforms to (frequently outmoded and stereotype-driven) European and American notions of what Latin music, culture and identity is “supposed” to look and sound like.

I’ve banged this particular drum numerous times before, and while I certainly don’t mean to disparage anyone from Latin America (or its diaspora) who’s experimenting with cumbia, reggaeton, bachata, salsa, merengue, guaracha or any other distinctly Latin style, those experiments—as exciting as they can be—only represent a fraction of what’s happening within the region. Plenty of Latin artists are making straight-up house, techno, jungle, electro, etc., and in some cases, they’re doing it far better than their European and American counterparts.

Forest on Stasys is one such artist. Based in Buenos Aires, he’s perhaps best known as the co-founder of the Danza Nativa label, although he also heads up his own Aura Sonora imprint. As a producer, he’s been releasing (mostly techno) records for more than a decade, and though he’s appeared on a variety of different outposts over the years, his new Deprogramming of Reality EP—which also happens to be his debut on storied Dutch label Delsin—feels like his highest-profile offering to date.

The Argentinian producer most definitely meets the moment, and the record’s robust title track serves as a kind of mission statement. Built atop a chunky kick and outfitted with ominously buzzing tones, its pulsing groove is brimming with electricity, though the sudden appearance of some chilled brass melodies (is that a trumpet?) prevents the whole thing from blowing out every circuit in the room. Opening number “Estructuras Monolíticas” is more of a moody chugger, and “Reptile Genetics” maintains a similarly pensive vibe, even as it steps up the percussion and tosses some serrated synths into the mix. But it’s the final track, “Return to the Source,” where Forest on Stasys properly exhales, swaddling his percolating—and yes, slightly Latin-tinged—drum patterns in lush pads and an enticing cloud of soft static. Much like the rest of Deprogramming of Reality, it’s unlikely to inspire any perreo competitions, but it’s a welcome reminder that when it comes to electronic music, Latin America has a lot more to offer than tropicalismo.

DJ Vibe and Fragoso
The Train
Limousine Dream

DJ Vibe is one of the heroes of European house music. For those who aren’t familiar with the Portuguese DJ and producer, that assertion may feel like hyperbole, so let me offer a quick primer: Vibe started putting out records in the early ’90s on a variety of labels, including the legendary Kaos imprint (which he runs). Developing a funky and melodic take on the ascendant progressive and tribal fusion sound that was taking over clubs at the time, his star quickly grew, both as a renowned remixer (his version of a Del 5 tune even ended up on a Carl Cox mix) and as one half of the group Underground Sound of Lisbon alongside partner-in-crime Doctor J.

And, sure, if you’re someone who can rattle off a top-10 list of Renaissance records, or you own more than two Global Underground mix CDs, there’s a good chance you’ll know the name DJ Vibe. But since the end of the progressive era, he hasn’t received the same sort of institutional recognition that’s been bestowed on some of his peers. (In other words, Albert Hall has yet to come calling.) Considering how great his records are, not to mention the post-pandemic progressive boom (that’s still ongoing), this feels like an oversight.

But thanks to The Train, a new record on Gene on Earth’s Limousine Dream imprint, maybe that will change. Teaming up another Portuguese producer, Fragoso, Vibe is back with four cuts of feelgood, big-room fare, all of them filled with dramatic twists and turns. Take the title track, where every minute or so, we’re treated to a new element or motif; undulating pads turn into anthemic chords before the music suddenly cuts out and a train whistle blows. The fact that all of this happens within the first half of the song makes clear that these two were having a whole lot of fun in the studio.

While “The Train” might be the biggest cut on offer, the EP also includes the bouncy “Harmony in Twilight,” which skillfully employs a wet bassline, sultry vocals and an organ solo. The rest of the EP is just as appealing, its swung grooves, wobbly basslines and gated chords more than capable of transporting you from your living room headphones into a field that’s somewhere warm and sunny.

other joe
the best is yet to come
Theory Therapy

In recent years, Melbourne-based Joseph Buchan’s next move has become increasingly difficult to predict. From the slinking ambient dub of 2021’s Jealousy Tulip to the small-scale bedroom classical of blessings from th eheart (released that same year) and the impressionistic electroacoustic drift of 2023’s a cat can look at a king, other joe’s sound has long been defined by a certain malleability, a tendency to shapeshift entirely from one release to the next.

It was with 2024’s one billion kisses—released on Theory Therapy, a Sydney label that sits at the forefront of modern downtempo—that Buchan’s sonic trajectory took its most dramatic turn, merging the internal world of the bedroom with the eyes-closed transcendence of the dancefloor. Two years later, he returns to Theory Therapy with a three-tracker that tells us in no uncertain terms: this is only the beginning.

Opening things up with the sort of self-assured confidence that makes the name the best is yet to come feel less like a boast than something inarguably certain, “inhale the Mist” bursts out of the gate on a turbo-charged engine, its insistent low-tempo beat tumbling forward and gathering momentum. Halfway through the track, a blazed-out sample from West Coast hip-hop outfit AG Club obscures the mix in a thick cloud of weed smoke; it’s the closest thing to a bonafide “drop” you’ll hear in a downtempo track, and it elevates the mood to such a degree that you can practically feel your pupils dilate the very moment it arrives.

Placing a standout song at the very beginning of a release can be a risky move, potentially overshadowing everything that follows, but on the best is yet to come, lightning strikes more than once. “Three Months Off” maintains the kinetic energy collected from “inhale the Mist” and launches towards the stratosphere with an ecstatic trip-hop beat, one that feels destined to accompany the sort of profound realizations that can arise during a perfect sunrise set, when the light begins to peer through the canopy overhead and all you want to do is tell your friends you love them. “they live amongst us” then acts as a necessary cool-down period, its slowly gliding pulses echoing the warm afterglow of a beautiful trip, resonating outwards and integrating into the everyday.

In just 14 short minutes, Buchan kicks the door down, blows the roof off the house and then promptly disappears, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of dust and a promise: “I’ll be back soon, and I’m just getting started.”

Phase Fatale
Off Desire
Dekmantel UFO Series

Hayden Payne isn’t afraid of having a bit of a laugh. Sure, as Phase Fatale, his name might conjure up that moment when techno was feeling extra heavy as the dark corners of the ’80s (i.e. industrial and EBM) started to filter their way into dance music’s collective consciousness. But Payne’s output has always found the perfect marriage of light and dark, seriousness and silliness… fill in the blank with your juxtaposition of choice. And if you need a primer for what this all sounds like, check out the recent RA mix from his Soft Crash project with Pablo Bozzi. When was the last time you heard Moby and Madonna in that flagship mix series?

Payne’s latest offering as Phase Fatale, Off Desire, utilizes a similar emotional palette. At its core, the EP consists of driving, big-room techno, and most of the tracks would sound great as the day turns to night or night turns to day at your favorite festival (the anxious “Blue Rose” being the exception that’s better suited to those darker hours). But where the record really excels is when Payne throws in a few cheeky curveballs.

On the breakdown of “Immobile Symmetry,” for example, he seems to detune the chords in real time before dispensing with the atmospheric feedback that colors the song’s first half, leaving behind a sequence of lean and punchy drums. “Guts” pushes things even further, employing what sounds like a cowbell and motifs that could have been lifted from a B-movie horror soundtrack. Yet the EP’s true climax is its title track. It’s big. It’s emotional. It’s also just the right amount of camp, with chords that feel like they’re descending from the heavens via orange and purple shades of Adriatic sunsets. And just when you think things can’t get any deeper in the feels, it introduces a winding, slightly twangy guitar line that sounds like an homage to New Order. The song, and frankly all of Off Desire, is sturdy enough for the superclubs, but while many techno artists in that realm have stuck to stone-faced seriousness, Payne seems to be having a whole lot of fun.

Function
Aeternum (Existenz)
Tresor

“A Function record on Tresor.” That phrase probably conjures up a very specific notion for those familiar with the general history of Dave Sumner (not to mention the Berlin institution). But anyone who’s been keeping up with techno’s favorite bad boy during the past few years has likely noticed a pivot in his sound, one that arguably began with 2019’s Existenz—an album which, as it happens, was also released on Tresor. On that LP, Sumner drew from a wider cross-section of his tastes, producing something that was both surprisingly beautiful and—I can’t believe I’m writing this—a bit silly.

If Existenz inaugurated Function 2.0, then the new Aeternum (Existenz) is the third record he’s released in this mode. (The second was 2021’s Awakening from the Illusory Self, and in 2023 he also released Green, though that EP—which he described as “dark, cerebral hypnotica”—found him intentionally returning to the sound palette of his early Function output and his landscape-altering work with Sandwell District.) An expansive and gorgeous listen, Aeternum (Existenz) opens with “Ascent,” tapping into ’90s-era IDM while employing sound design that is simultaneously warm and alien; the resulting tune could potentially soundtrack a future data center on Mars.

The rest of Aeternum (Existenz) is a bit more techno, but even when Sumner is back in the bag, he’s not turning out paint-by-numbers, grayscale monoliths. “November 29,” for instance, offers electro and acid slink, sounding more like something you’d hear during peak hours at Hoppetosse than Berghain. And while Sumner is fully capable of using kick drums as a kind of blunt instrument, both the drums and the melody on “Growth Cycle (Hermetic Mix)” are dainty to the point of being gossamer.

Many years removed from the days of getting into fist fights on stage, Sumner has clearly slowed down some, but that shift hasn’t tempered the quality of his records. Aeternum (Existenz) is full of lush, ’90s-reminiscent ambient techno—and it was written by someone who was actually there.

Tomo Katsurada and Jonny Nash
At the Emerald Pool
Melody as Truth

A successful collaboration can be similar to a beautiful conversation, often owing just as much to the magic of the circumstances—an aligning of stars if you will—as to the participants themselves. And when we are really lucky, these dialogues can feel like not just a glimpse into the minds of the musicians involved, but a converging of separate universes. Tomo Katsurada and Jonny Nash are two artists whose careers have followed much different trajectories—the former played in the legendary (and now disbanded) Japanese psych-rock band Kikagaku Moyo, while the latter has long been an influential figure in the world of new age- and ECM-adjacent ambient—but when listening to At the Emerald Pool, one can’t help but wonder if their paths were fated to intersect all along.

They first worked together on Katsurada’s 2024 solo debut, Dream of the Egg, and then spent the following year playing live in various settings and configurations, developing and exploring new ideas before setting out to record a collaborative album. The results play out like a hushed campfire conversation between friends in the early hours of the morning—bleary-eyed and unguarded, the embers of the previous night brought to a quiet and contemplative smoulder. Built around the gentle interweaving of Katsurada and Nash’s slow-picked, pendulum-like guitars, At the Emerald Pool moves patiently forward with an unhurried insistence; there’s no concern for destination, allowing the listener to simply take in the beauty of each moment and hold on to the significance of each word. At the center of the album is the deep, unspoken understanding of close friends, a near-telepathic call and response between two people who have learned to communicate in a way that transcends language.

Opening the album like the parting of clouds, the guitars of “Stained Light” descend in a glowing latticework, Katsurada and Nash’s presences impossible to disentangle from one another. On more vocal-centered tracks like the darkly mysterious “Anone One” and the Durutti Column-esque “Know My Name,” the two trade off vocal duties while still maintaining a clear through line between their respective routes, their presence and vision so closely aligned so as to become nearly indistinguishable. The entire album flows like a shared dream; imagine two landscapes transposed over one another in perfect harmony, or two minds becoming one in the flow state of a beautiful conversation.