Futureproofing #19: More Reviews With No Clever Title

New releases on Ilian Tape, Planet Mu, Tempa, and plenty more.

Andrea’s Living Room album

Hello everyone,

I come to you, hat in hand, with more reviews. There’s no overarching theme here, just releases from the last… 4-6 weeks that I have enjoyed. As always, a reminder that you can email me at andrewryce AT gmail dot com if you want to send me music for consideration.

Also, I had two reviews go up on Pitchfork this past week, of two albums I have listened to a lot. 1) Facta’s GULP, which is like a boutique little mnml album, and 2) Nick León’s A Tropical Entropy, which is probably one of the most hyped electronic albums of the year. You can read a great interview with Nick over at Philip Sherburne’s Substack, Futurism Restated.

The reviews

Edited by Tom Gledhill

Andrea - Living Room [Ilian Tape, 2025]

Skee Mask and the Zenker Brothers will always be Ilian Tape's crossover stars, but Andrea deserves a seat at the table. The Turin producer has a similar ear for sonic detail and unconventional rhythms, but his records are usually a bit more obviously rooted in dub and drum & bass. To wit: Living Room is full of lush percussive patterns that feel like they were assembled from jazz drum kit samples. "Reactions" reminds me of a Shed track if he pulled his punches a little, with hats and brushed snares orbiting around a syncopated kick drum, and "Areusure" is almost like vintage Amon Tobin, complete with woozy synths and an upright-style bassline. This is armchair techno at its finest: danceable, percussive, and rich with texture and detail.

Polygonia - Dream Horizons [Dekmantel, 2025]

Polygonia is one of my favorite newer-generation techno producers, with an approach to the genre that emphasizes textures, voices and alternative percussion sounds, turning clichés inside-out. Take "Soul Reflections," from her newest album. On the surface level it's another rollicking techno track, but all the percussive devices sound lightweight and bouncy, a bit like being inside a maraca. These textures morph in real time as the track gains steam, which literally sounds psychedelic, like light trails changing shapes and sizes as your pupils adjust. "Set Me Free" puts a disorienting vocal hook onto an otherwise slamming main stage techno banger, while late-album tracks like "Twisted Colours" and "Hidden Blue" deal with more broken beat patterns that take influence from early Plastikman and drum & bass in equal measure. But the best thing about Polygonia's music is how it sounds huge and skeletal at the same time—her melodic elements are thin and malleable, but stand tall, as streaks of color and light flash in the empty spaces around them.

Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force - Khadim [Ndagga, 2025]

I saw Mark Ernestus play here in Los Angeles two weeks ago. I wasn't sure what to expect: Khadim had just come out, but I knew he wasn't going to bring the Ndagga band with him. He didn't play tracks from the Ndagga Rhythm Force albums, nor did he play much dub or dub techno. Instead, Ernestus threw a curveball and played mostly Afro house and leftfield amapiano. The kind that deals in dubby effects, skanking rhythms, titanic basslines courtesy of some ultra-low-tuned bass drums and log drums. On this new album from Ernestus and his Senegalese troupe, all of these obsessions come together into a one-of-a-kind record. I'll just highlight the 14-minute title track, one of the most bewitching pieces of electronic music I've heard all year. In true Ernestus fashion, it's an eternal groove, rolling, slippery, and syncopated, with a vocal sliding over top and a dub techno-style pulse keeping time underneath. It all comes together with the freedom of jazz but the aesthetics of techno—minimalist yet booming, precise yet massive. 

Nikki Nair - Violence Is The Answer [Future Classic, 2025]

I often think about Nikki Nair's DJ set at smartbar in Chicago last September. His set was so strange and unpredictable, and it was clear he was having fun. It sounds trite, but it reminded me of what DJing at its peak can be. Nair isn't a flashy turntablist, but his ear for sudden changes and tempo shifts is remarkable. He never lets one idea sit for too long—and the tracks he does play are hooky and melodic enough that it never feels exhausting. His first EP in over a year lands on Future Classic and captures some of that feeling: odd, discombobulated pop songs: eerie vocals ("My brain gets smooth when I think about you" over a deep-fried Jersey club beat on "Smooth"), raw electro turned buttery-soft ("Somebody," with yuné pinku), a track that's essentially HudMo's "Cbat" turned into a love song rather than a "making love" song. There's even a feature from Blaketheman1000, and it kind of sounds like Broken Social Scene performing at some grotty house rave. Is it good? I honestly don't know. But I respect it.

Neurotron - Lost In Thoughts [Port-Au-Prince, 2025]

Neurotron are two funky white boys from Germany who have been making deep house and techno since 2004. I'll admit I wasn't familiar with them until some Hardwax browsing late last year, which brought me to their new label, Port-Au-Prince. They've released one EP per year on the newer imprint, and the music matches that unhurried pace: this is ultra-classy dance music where every element is put together just so. You can hear it best on "Electronic Highway," where the only real spiffy touch is a light halo of reverb—otherwise it sounds like music recorded straight from drum machine and keyboard to tape, its ominous chords offsetting the Latin strut of the rhythm. "10000 Miles Away" is more jaunty, a housey take on early Kompakt with a surplus of bongos. "Breaking Point" flips so-called "melodic techno"—that overwrought post-Tale-Of-Us sound—into something captivating, with brassy synths and weepy arps that ripple with muscular strength.

FaltyDL - Neurotica [Planet Mu, 2025]

FaltyDL's return to Planet Mu—where he released what I think are his best records—was inspired by playing with his daughter and falling in love with fast, cutesy dance music. (He cites hearing Mietzi Conte's "Secret" as having a similar effect on him as when he first heard Burial.) The result is a record that can't quite keep still, fidgeting at fast tempos without feeling all that aggressive. Some tracks, like "I Can Hear It All The Time," are just chipmunkier versions of classic FaltyDL, with hyperactive drum patterns and a pitched vocal refrain that could've been piped in from some old hip-hop-soul record.  "But there are other interesting vocal experiments too, like the airy R&B-on-speed of "Craving You," gabbery opener "Son Of The Morning", and the discordant "Breeding"—where each melodic element goes off in a different direction, all at the same time."But the best part is how the LP careens between extremes, switching from paranoid to ecstatic and back again, which lives up to the title Neurotica. It's a strange little record, and not every track is a knockout, but the mood swings make it more exciting than any album full of straight-up dance music or downtempo jams would've been.

Mr. Mitch - Melodic Loops To Relax To (Loops 1-10) [Gobstopper Records, 2025]

This LP gathers material UK artist Mr. Mitch originally made for a YouTube series of… loopy tracks meant to help the listener relax. I've actually been using it to sleep, but I don't think that should reflect on the music or the level of attention it deserves. For Mr. Mitch, the concept is an interesting spin on the old adage that simple setups or constraints lead to better music. Here, the lack of pressure—beyond merely existing and sounding pleasant—leads to some real stunners. The humid rainforest atmosphere of "Loop 4" blurs the line between field recording and synthesis, while the psychedelic "Loop 8," which sounds like the ambient instrumental passages of Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" made into a whole track, feels awestruck but dazed. There are tracks that hint at lopsided house music ("Loop 9") or Boards Of Canada daydreaming ("Loop 1"), and the music is varied—and vibrant—enough that you could listen to it as an album without wanting to relax. Still, I find it's best at that somnolent, half-lidded state, when you can't tell if the music sounds sleepy or if it's just you.

D. Tiffany - Each Morning [Weaponize Your Sound, 2025]

After years of helping drive the turbo-charged proggy trance music rush, D. Tiffany slows way down and dips back into her band roots (she used to be a drummer) with Each Morning. You could slot these six songs into the sorta-shoegaze, sorta-trip-hop revival—labels like Motion Ward or bands like untitled (halo)—but there's something else going on here. Like fellow Vancouverite Regularfantasy, D. Tiffany takes nostalgic songs from her youth and transforms them into DIY electronic jams. "Don't Tell Me" is a sluggish, heatstruck cover of the Madonna Music highlight, while "Forests" is a paranoid take on The Cure's "A Forest" that sounds like getting lost in the woods at night and starting to panic a little bit. 

The best cover is a trip-hop version of "Purple Airplane"—AKA Canadian Eurodance act Love Inc's "Broken Bones"—which makes the original's implicit unease explicit. She adds rave stabs and synth wiggles that sound like intrusive thoughts, the sound of someone on a bad trip convincing themselves they're on a really bad trip. Each Morning is a brave though sometimes tentative EP that touches on territory most other similar artists won't: downtempo that sounds a little scared and on edge, instead of sultry.

Introspekt - Moving The Center [Tempa, 2025]

Few dubstep producers in 2025 are operating on the level of American producer Introspekt, who has an intrinsic understanding of this music and the production chops to make it sound absolutely perfect. Her debut album lands on Tempa, a perfect home for a record that zooms in on the early '00s period where UK garage turned into dubstep, but written with hindsight in mind—so you get edits of "Cape Fear" and samples of obscure(ish) Mala records. Rather than write more myself, I'll direct you to my Substack editor and former colleague Tom Gledhill's review for RA, which says it better and more succinctly than I probably could.

Space Ghost & Teddy Bryant - Majestic Fantasies [Peace World, 2025]

Space Ghost's Private Paradise has stuck with me since it came out in 2022. The Oakland artist makes house music with broad strokes, qualities that leap out on his new collaboration with vocalist Teddy Bryant. Here, he blends his laid-back house music with new jack swing and vintage UK street soul. If it didn't sound so pristine and three-dimensional, you could probably convince me this was a record from the early '90s. The drums are huge, the synths wiggle and bend like old G-funk records, and the basslines sound like they're trying to dig a hole… in a funky way. (I'm obsessed with how the low-end trails behind the kick drum on "Some Things Last Forever.") Some tracks sound like pure-hearted tributes to this era of R&B, like the sultry "Unconditional, while others embrace the silliness. The synth sax and gently driving rhythm on the title track remind me of old Pender Street Steppers records, only fleshed-out into the kind of obscure soul gems they were inspired by. Whichever way you look at it—retro, winking, or heart-on-sleeve—this is excellent R&B. 

Quelza - Pensa Poetico [Dekmantel, 2025]

Of all the artists making music in the purple patch between drum & bass and techno, Quelza is one of the most creative—and maybe the most unmoored from the rules of either genre. But he's also underrated. It's not as if he's making some kind of brand new music, but who else is putting out tunes like "Pensa Poetico," an 11-minute journey through weightless-but-weighty dub techno? The skanking dub rhythm is twitchy and addled—insectoid sounds scurry between the kick drums, which act like load bearing pillars, until suddenly the track dissipates in its midsection, with breakbeats that circle like inclement weather on the horizon. But they largely stay on the horizon, a trick Quelza plays on the rest of the EP, including the tabla freak-out "Belly Jolie Movements," which sounds like it's caught in a wind tunnel and blazing a path forward at the same time.

Underpass - Blue Emerald [Sorry Records, 2025]

Underpass is a new project from New York duo John Barera and BYLD. Barera is one of my favorite American house producers. He takes a multi-instrumentalist's approach and experience to house music, with spacious arrangements that highlight melody and hooks, leaving room for every sound to breathe. BYLD has a similar background, and plays all sorts of instruments—together, they make post-disco stripped down to its barest essentials. "Liquid" has to be a reference to Liquid Liquid, with its wiggling low-end, clipped piano riff and choppy (but never angular) guitar riff. It's utterly simple, but the gritty bassline and live-sounding instrumentation mean it also sounds deep and full—this isn't your average sickly Euro disco. "Stranded" has a whiff of Metro Area, with ephemeral strings and stiff percussion, as if the duo strung together a track with foggy memories of an old disco song. This is steak-and-potatoes disco house made by people who really know how to make good steak and potatoes.