Futureproofing #24: 5 Records

A short update about five records I like this week—post-punk, techno, pop.

Raica’s quiet details release.

All this new music I love is piling up, so I wanted to do a quick newsletter in between meatier ones. These are simply five records I’m listening to a lot right now.

The music

Edited by Tom Gledhill

Jessy Lanza - Slapped By My Life [Hyperdub, 2025]

"​​When I wrote 'Slapped By My Life,' I was desperate to feel something other than sadness," Jessy Lanza says about her new single, which was made when her husband was undergoing cancer treatment. There's a giddiness to it, the kind that comes when you're so freaked out you don't know what to do with your body. You start shaking your leg, flailing around, maybe even running in place. That jitter is enhanced by co-producer Pearson Sound, whose twitchy style of post-whatever dance music was practically made to express this feeling. "Slapped By My Life" is emotionally blunt as it is brazenly catchy, built around the simple repetition of a phrase ("I miss you when you go, go, go, go") that becomes almost transcendent in its grief. The original mix is dizzy and unpredictable, with drum fills going off at random, while the "Existential Edit" ups the anxiety with a body-checking bassline and staccato vocal processing. The B-side is made up of previously released material, but hey, I forgot how great the 2-steppy "Midnight Ontario (Waterfall Dub)" was, so I'm happy with the reminder.

JASSS - Eager Buyers [AWOS, 2025]

Normally I find the use of field recordings in otherwise non-field-recording-oriented music gimmicky, but on the latest album from Spanish artist JASSS, it's the literal je ne sais quois that I couldn't put my finger on the first time around. With more listens, you hear more layers. Eager Buyers has a sort of noxious warmth to it, like the breeze when the weather goes above 100°F. When what should be refreshing or cooling is actually just kind of icky.

At its core, it's a post-punk album with a gothy techno tint. The evil music box lilt of "Sand Wrists" mashes together Durutti Column with early Cabaret Voltaire, while "Wood Words" has the blackened, despondent thrust of early Raime records. The best track is "It's A Hole," featuring vocalist-of-the-moment James K who slurs her way through a choppy breakbeat that feels sluggish, almost drunken. It's that physicality that makes Eager Buyers come alive—an anxiety that makes you want to move either because of fear, or in spite of it. In all its fashionable fatigue yet surprisingly limber grooves, it reminds me a lot of early Blackest Ever Black, which is among the highest compliments I could give any music.

F7 - Lost In Flower [Acting Press, 2025]

Lost In Flower is a doozy even by Acting Press standards. A triple-LP from Vancouver producer Jean Brazeau (FKA Friendly Chemist and Downtown Solutions), and the slightly more mysterious All Rest No People, also known as Accelera and Neurotribe. Yes, that's a lot of names, and Lost In Flower comes out under a whole new moniker. It's the longest release on Acting Press, and maybe the best to date: a near 80-minute journey through fetching atmospheric interludes ("N-Dimensional"), serrated and sinister ambient techno ("Shooting Rulers"), and tracks that flesh out a parallel universe in which early Hard Wax and X-102 records informed modern hard techno, instead of hardstyle and gabber. Lost In Flower hovers close to pastiche, but it's too adventurous to inhabit any one style—tracks finish just when you get used to them and make way for the next slab of retrofuturist techno. It's full of hi-def gurgles, sculpted reverb and delays, and enough production wizardry to get lost in while remaining danceable. This would have slayed in the mid-'90s, but it slays now, too.

Joe Milli - Deep Forest [Livity Sound, 2025]

London producer Joe Milli appears on Livity Sound with four tracks that not only illustrate the label's hybrid dance music M.O., while pushing it into genuinely new territory. The title track is a clammy, UK-funky-techno fusion with carefully deployed bass bombs and just enough bongos to feel floaty. The canny mix of minimalism and bottom-end heft reminds me of T. Williams' early '10s days in Deep Teknologi. "Look Again" sounds a little more like Peverelist, sultry but po-faced, while "Keep The Wire" is basically a sequel to Pev & Kowton's "Raw Code," replacing that track's slamming urgency with an almost coy bounce. Milli is clearly a student of what came before him, but he offers enough of his own personality (especially those cartoonish, wind-up bass notes) to stand apart from his teachers.

Raica - The Absence Of Being [quiet details, 2025]

Raica's contribution to the quiet details series is bolder than most, more '70s synth album than willowy ambient music. She describes it as a "love note to my mom and my son Cameron," both of whom "left me much sooner than I would have liked," and that grief weighs down each and every synth texture. But there's also hope in here, along with triumph in shrugging off that weight. The simply-titled "Sometimes Sad But Not," seems in awe of its own beauty. Filter envelopes open and close, changing the shape of the notes, like listening to someone process their emotions in real time. On "Not There Though, Dive," a poignant keyboard melody is daubed over a sustained drone, which itself is interrupted by a pall of bass and high-pitched whirring that sounds like a UFO descending to earth. It's jarring, but so is loss. How even when it seems like things are stabilized, something can suddenly jut out and wound you all over again. Each release on the label is meant to be an interpretation of the name "quiet details," but in this case, everything feels loud and overwhelming, until it isn't anymore.