Futureproofing #29: Ego Dissolution
Thoughts on new OPN, Denise Rabe, The Bug, and two great death metal records.
Hi everyone,
It’s EOY season, which means that all music writing from here on out is obsolete until January 1st. But I wanted to share more recent favorites, including two death metal records I absolutely love, as part of my kind-of-sort-of pledge to write more about that side of my musical taste, as well. If year-end is what you’re after, you can catch me in Pitchfork and Resident Advisor’s 2025 year round ups, and I’ll have my own year-in-review newsletter closer to New Year’s Eve. For now:
The music
Edited by Tom Gledhill
Denise Rabe - Transition [30D Records, 2025]
Transition sounds like a techno album dug out from the wreck of some alien spacecraft: recognizable but chewed-up and mucky. If a record like Binary Algorithms’ Reminiscencias was the platonic ideal of a functional techno full-length, this one is the other kind, where the techno template becomes a canvas for rorschach blobs of synths and percussion. The sounds are vaguely threatening, with lots of window-rattling low-end: “XII House” is a sustained heart palpitation full of chirping crickets and sonar pings, usual techno clichés employed in unusual ways. “Immerge Fem” sounds like the creaking of a haunted house, one with a malfunctioning boiler rumbling somewhere in the basement. As the album progresses, it becomes a little more danceable, and “Fifth Guardian” is as magnetic a techno track as any other released this year, though full of unnerving, scratchy, B-movie sci-fi sounds. Transition embodies what appeals to me most about techno as a whole: the ability to make something new and unusual in an otherwise remarkably restrictive milieu.
Oneohtrix Point Never - Tranquilizer [Warp Records, 2025]
I haven’t been a huge fan of Daniel Lopatin’s recent albums. They’re aesthetically great, but don’t really hold together. Tranquilizer feels like a very purposeful reset, or at least a rewind, and it’s being met with the kind of universal acclaim usually associated with a legendary musician going back to what they do best. So let’s get it out of the way: this is basically Replica part two, but in a very good way. And even if my favorite OPN is actually Russian Mind and Returnal-era kosmische journeyman OPN, there’s something irresistible about this record’s mix of old-school analogue warmth and hyper-modern digital processing.
Tranquilizer has been written about at length everywhere already, so I’ll keep the backstory short: it’s built from a sample library that disappeared from archive.org that Lopatin later serendipitously found again. Sonically, it’s somewhere between Replica and R Plus 7, with muted analogue timbres mingling with gleaming streaks of chrome. The music rarely stays the same for more than a few seconds at a time, recalling the chaos of Again, but it feels more welcoming than that, each new turn a soft landing instead of a jolt. This writhing mass of bionic matter reminds me a lot of records by Rashad Becker and Valerio Tricoli, but what’s most exciting is the clash of textures. The opener, for instance, begins like Pink Floyd’s “Welcome To The Machine” before going all Far Side Virtual. It’s like the two halves of Lopatin’s career running at the same time on top of each other.
Ancient Death - Ego Dissolution [Profound Lore, 2025]
Ego Dissolution is easily the best death metal album of 2025. Ancient Death riff on peak, prog-era Death in much the same way as Blood Incantation: less technical and more accessible, driven by melody instead of brutality or showy exhibitionism. Dig the way that the guitar leads make spiderwebs behind the vocals on the title track, or how “Breathe - Transcend (Into the Glowing Streams of Forever)” lives up to the Dark Side Of The Moon lineage of its title, from its soaring main section to the gorgeous bridge with vocals from Jasmine Alexander—whose voice hangs above the music like a wind blowing on the firmament. If you’ve ever been curious about death metal but are afraid of the growly vocals or blunt heaviness (the mixing sits closer to ‘70s King Crimson), this is a great place to start. Especially if you like ripping guitar solos.
VoidCeremony - Abditum
This one, however, is not for death metal beginners. With titles as dense as their music (”Tenebrous Lucidity”), San Diego band VoidCeremony worships at the altar of Cynic and Atheist—or, for regular people, early Genesis—packing an EP’s worth of riffs into a single song. But while the harmonics lean jazzy and discordant, the group indulge in occasional moments of ‘70s excess, letting their freak flags fly with gorgeous guitar leads and floating breakdowns. And sometimes they really just go for it, like on “Veracious Duality,” which sounds like a side-long Yes epic compressed into three minutes, riffs and rhythms shifting frantically every few seconds. It’s ridiculous, challenging, and a hell of a lot of fun.
Oklou - Choke Enough (expansion pack) [True Panther, 2025]
Oklou’s album choke enough was a slow-burner for me this year. I got to know it gradually over a period of eight months, far beyond the usual release cycle shelf life. choke enough whispers instead of shouting, full of synths turned down to the lowest volume and words muttered in a salival slush. Last month it was re-released in deluxe format with a few new tracks, including the more polished, FKA twigs-featuring “viscus.” “what’s good” is the real stunner, though, a breakup song that sounds like it’s barely holding itself together. It dissects the torturous end of a relationship as mediated through the phone: nudes, unanswered texts, algorithmic suggestions, and the many meanings of the phrase “what’s good.” Heartbreakingly, when it ends, it just stops, as simple and quick an action as angrily hanging up. “what’s good” suits the strange and seductive album it’s appended to, with songs that sound like hummingbirds chirping at the afters of a medieval rave (”thank you for recording”) or a Sims character covering “Stereo Love” (the unbeatable “harvest sky”).
The Bug vs Ghost Dubs - Implosion [PRESSURE, 2025]
The versus format usually makes me suspicious, but Implosion’s ultra-heavy dub is so fully realized it stands as a testament to the artists’ sheer force of will, matching the quality of their individual solo LPs. Here, the veteran dub-and-techno producer The Bug holds his own against an assault from dub techno (relative) newcomer Ghost Dubs, each artist trying to one-up the other in a post-apocalyptic soundclash.
The Bug’s tracks are of a kind with his recent output: monolithic and slow, like dub made from the movement of tectonic plates. His tracks are all sustained squalls of bass and evil skanking, think meditations on bassweight over stuff to dance or mosh to. Ghost Dubs, on the other hand, makes dub techno that sounds like it’s assembled from scrap metal, strange sounds jostling and rattling in uneven patterns with each beat.
Going back-and-forth between The Bug’s slow-motion pulverizing and Ghost Dubs’ kinetic machines highlights their differences and similarities. The tension makes this 71-minute behemoth more compelling than two separate solo LPs would have been. I’d wager it’s actually one of the best albums in The Bug’s entire discography.
Blocks & Escher - Charm / All That Glitters [Narratives Music, 2025]
UK duo Blocks & Escher make cinematic drum & bass that matches the bold strokes and big melodies of crews like Hospital Records, but less poppy and more stargazing. They’ve released a few records on Metalheadz, but most of their stuff comes on their own label Narratives, which they return to for the first time in five years with an 11-minute epic and a worthy B-side. With its pan pipes and zither strums, “Charm Pt. & Pt. 2” sounds a bit like a techstep track that died and went to a fairytale version of heaven: the drums are blocky and gated, the basslines groaning, but the melodies are bright and hopeful, everything aglow and beaming with life before the second half gets funkier with it. “All That Glitters” on the flipside doesn’t scale quite the same heights, but its breathy vocal pads and liberal application of reverb make it just as beautifully weightless, a marvel of drum & bass engineering that makes this duo a key favorite for the real nerdy 170 BPM heads.x
K-LONE - sorry i thought you were someone else [Incienso, 2025]
More music to file under minimal revival. This, to me, sounds like home listening tech house—tech home?—with unusually warm textures and a twee melodic sense that harkens back to early ‘00s records from artists like The Books and The Notwist, with a dash of Alcachofa mischief. On tracks like “fair enough 2 be fair,” miniature bleeps and (what sounds like) electric piano dot a rhythm section that wriggles and curves back into itself, the melodies sparkling like winking stars in a pitch-black night sky. At times, the album can feel a bit like a genre exercise, but it has that distinct Wisdom Teeth glow, and it’s best when it uses tech house as a jumping-off point, like “slk,” which starts off low and grumbly before turning into silky, Loidis-esque dub techno.