Futureproofing #22: Weird fishes and bubblegum aquariums
New techno, breaks, and ambient, from the likes of Sub Basics, Jialing, Polygonia, mu tate and more.
Hello everyone,
A shorter one here ahead of an interview coming out next week. In addition to what’s below, I’ve been a little busy outside of Substack-land. I wrote a few Pitchfork reviews, including of the excellent Coatshek album on Dark Entries and the solid new Kaytranada record. I also helped put together a series of themed playlists to mark the release of the 100th RA Podcast mix, which was a pretty trippy—and exhausting—trip down memory lane, but also a great way to think about how dance music has evolved and changed since I first got in the game over 15 years ago. You can see those playlists, and then check out the incredible ten RA.1000 mixes, here.
Below are some records I’ve been listening to a lot over the past couple weeks.
The Music
Edited by Tom Gledhill
Sub Basics - Wavelengths [Animalia, 2025]
I haven’t written about Animalia anywhere in a while, but it remains one of the coolest (and most stylish) dance labels around. The Australian imprint’s latest EP comes from the somewhat obscure Bristol producer behind one of the major highlights on this year’s Wisdom Teeth compilation (featured in Futureproofing #17). I love these slow-motion shakers, which apply a minimal techno formula to dubby trance and psy: here, a simple shift in delay, or the way a sound ripples out across the rhythm section, holds the power. The melody in “Signal” is basically just one note, but it’s one hell of a note, combining the almost antisocial rigidity of tech house with the sultriness of dub techno. “Residual” leans more tribal—hand drums daubed with liquid mercury chords—while on the flipside, things get even more psytrance-y, in the vein of recent Spekki Webu records. But the music is no less seductive. The heart rate is just upped a few notches. Like on “Falling,” whose synth ripples and flutters until it’s pushed aside by a tough lead that sounds like it was recorded in a wind tunnel. It might be belligerent if it weren’t so perfectly mixed down.
JIALING - WUPS! [Sorry Records, 2025]
Looking into my patented Music Critic Crystal Ball, I’d say there’s a solid chance that JIALING will blow up in the next year or so—whatever “blowing up” as an underground dance music producer looks like anymore. The Baltimore artist has it all, but more specifically, she has incredible production chops, an intrinsic understanding of club music of all shapes and a keen sense of humour. The samples on the zany, careening “Banana Peel,” are at least partially taken from Mario Kart, and there’s a funky breakdown worthy of Miami Sound Machine in the last third of the track, because why not. These are breaks-heavy tunes that lean on older eras of dance music without resorting to full-on nostalgia—the full-on junglism of “ME THINKS” is weighed down by a sticky LFO bassline, and “CUNTY” spikes breakbeat hardcore with the exaggerated thrust of ballroom. WUPS! is almost overstuffed with ideas and references, but that quality makes them worth listening to all the way through. Imagine dance music edits made from previous dance music edits in a fractal pattern: listening to WUPS! is as information-packed and rousing as it is hypnotizing. Bonus: here’s an excellent collab with Sam Binga that just came out as well.
Gay Felony - GYSTMIX-030 [Gyration Station, 2025]
Speaking of older eras of dance music—but maybe with a little bit of nostalgia—I’ve been playing this Gay Felony mix for LA retro-techno-revivalists Gyration Station quite a bit for the past month. (Full disclosure: Gay Felony DJ’d my wedding in 2022.) I originally knew her as a DJ that leaned heavy on old-school prog house, but in the last couple years she’s blended that with old-school deep-and-funky house music for a blend of styles that feels very ‘90s, but also all her own. It’s pumping and sweaty, but also ruminative and just a little clammy—house music joy shot through with a hint of seedy sex and paranoia.
Crystal Sting - Bubblegum Aquarium [POW Recordings, 2025]
This EP of vaguely downtempo electronic music comes on journalist Jeff Weiss’s POW Recordings, a label more readily associated with rap. There’s nothing remotely hip-hop about these two Canadian college kids’ music, though. Bubblegum Aquarium actually reminds me a lot of the music on Tri Angle in the early 2010s: beautiful but naive, fumbling towards transcendence. One guy plays instruments while the other processes them with modular synths, and the result is ambling ambient built out of steel drums, vibraphone, and keyboards. Normally I’m allergic to soothing tropical sounds like those on “Splash Party” or “Fish Jelly,” but the wonderfully lopsided rhythm on the latter lends a welcome weirdness, an unpolished style that cancels out some of the music’s smoother edges. It all feels very DIY, like they’re making it up as they go along: check the glitchy static on “Suburban Atomizer,” which undercuts the otherwise placid vibraphone. At its strongest, there’s an almost regal quality to this music, like modern classical made by people who know nothing about classical music.
Lyder - weird.fishes [tunnel.visions, 2025]
This one has taken me a while to wrap my head around, but I’ve kept at it thanks to the presence of Futureproofing favorite Polygonia, who is part of Lyder alongside fellow German artists FTP Doctor and Maurice Stahl. The easiest way to describe this would be Fourth World jazz with a slight hint of post-punk—improvisational music built on a bed of synth and decorated with little bits of violin and woodwind, like sea anemones waving from their coral reef homes. The music is exploratory and non-linear, and one of my favorite things about the album is how it inhales and exhales, with longer, more abstract tracks framed by shorter snapshots of melody and firmer texture. I love the miniature underwater ecosystem of “Tangwald,” with breaths, rattles, and vocaloid sounds, but I also love the empty expanse of “Pelagial,” which reminds me of early Demdike Stare or Bohren & der Club Of Gore, rendered in pastels.
mu tate, NEXCYIA & Exzald S - Labège [Good Morning Tapes, 2025]
Labège is literally a summit of some of the best artists making feelings-forward, dance music-adjacent ambient music. It was recorded as part of a residency in the French town of the same name, and it sounds like three artists getting to know each other, inviting and cozy in its intimacy. Things begin tentatively with snatches of vocals and the barest hints of rhythm, gradually getting denser over the six-song sequence. The skittering beat on “Eg” sounds like vintage IDM, while the sharks-circling-the-water Reese basslines and faraway samples on “Railcé” are a dead ringer for Burial’s recent sound collages, but with a little more grit and glue to hold things together. Eventually, we start to hear almost-formed songs poke out from the mist, with the strum of nylon strings or tickled ivories attempting to frame the formless drift. Labège doesn’t fully cohere into anything resembling structure, but it has a tension—and an occasional sense of impending doom—that makes it almost theatrical even at its most dissolute.