What We’re Listening to This Week (9.4.26)

Ambient Articles Dark Ambient Dark Techno Deep Techno Drum & Bass Electronic Experimental Goblincore Hip-Hop IDM Industrial Industrial Techno Intelligent Drum and Bass Minimal Techno Sound Collage Techno
James Krustofski
September 5, 2026
15 minutes read

Archives:

ONE by Slikback

This is such an intense album. I just discovered Slikback (courtesy of Wet Mango, who sent me a joint playlist that I worked through on a long drive with SPINES on the way back from San Francisco with the moans of sea lions still lingering in my skull) and ever since that day I’ve been obsessed with the track HYDRAULIC. Not to say that the entire record doesn’t have an ineffable “fuck them up” quality, because it does. The ridiculous part is that I’m sitting here specifically trying to sing the praises of “HYDRAULIC” when “RADAR” comes on next and is immediately making me consider hitting Ctrl+F and replacing every mention of HYDRAULIC with RADAR. This is the sort of editorial crisis I am happy to endure. Give this album a listen – it’s fantastic.

Bxtch Släp (Remastered) by Jasmine Infiniti

The album starts off with a bitcrushed Galadriel declaring, “In place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Treacherous as the sea! Stronger than the foundations of the earth!“ Which is great, because if I’m going to enjoy techno or something techno-adjacent, why not start it like that. Jasmine Infiniti is in frightening command of this material. That is the thing I keep coming back to. Electronic music can tolerate an enormous amount of chaos, but the people who really know what they’re doing make life worth living. This album has just about every flavor you could want for a Saturday Night in a sweaty underground mortuary fit with epoxy-sealed concrete. Wonderful album.

REGENERADA by Baseck

We love Baseck. One image permanently burned into my memory is Baseck at PROCESS a couple of months ago, sweaty and grinning, happier than a cyborg in a scrapyard, greeting people while the building filled up around him. That manic joy makes sense once you’ve seen him perform. REGENERADA did, in fact, regenerate me several times this week. After seeing Baseck live, I was struck by how comparatively subdued this track feels compared to the utter chaos of his live sets. The intensity is still there, but it’s been compressed and shortened into a fun and utterly satisfying PS1 demo that you’d get when you ordered a pie at Pizza Hut. Or maybe I’m just hearing Cheetah Man samples thrown in there and am on a nostalgia journey of my own. Either way, it’s a fun track.

Piedras by b-eats

b-eats is the alter ego of our friend B_DWIL who’s album Relampagueante was featured in an article last week – really good stuff. It’s clear now that I’m on a b-eats/B_DWIL kick because this record is so fucking alien and awesome. Honestly, I feel like the alien when listening to this. Welcome to Earth, James Krustofski. The minimalism used in some of these tracks is so effective because b-eats understands the compositional value of space; a sparse arrangement or beat can sit there for a moment and suddenly some warped little sound appears from a dark corner. Other passages are crazily lush, and it gives this record a strange elasticity between openness and density. Give this a listen.

patricide (2) by grief expert

Some of us are experts of grief, but after listening to this album, I know that I’ve listened to the real grief expert. God the album is so dark and fucked me up bad for a few hours on a Wednesday. teach my soul is especially vicious. Dark ambient pushes toward noise while an aching vocal sample hangs in the background like a ghost that has forgotten why it came back. Luckily, I’m always ready for this kind of trip so enjoy it with me and let the wave of sound flow through your soul and let your memories act as a filter for your lost existence. 10/10.

Production Unit Xero’s Set from Live in the Depths 101

Sadly, I missed Live in the Depths 101 because I’ve got it in my mind that serving capitalism is a short term project for a long term bit of spiritual success. Luckily we have SPAZ RADIO for these predicaments. Production Unit Xero’s set was out of this world. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a variation of this set at another show, but a lot of the nuance is definitely more present thanks to this high quality recording that’s not filtered through the shuffling, the beer, the ambient murmur of onlookers, etc. It’s jungle, it’s IDM, it’s motherfucking Production Unit Xero. Also there was a nice bit of lower frequency acid arps that I’ve never heard before tonight. It’s like a reward. You can listen to the whole thing below. It’s after the end of the world. Don’t you know that yet?