SYS_OPEN:\ – wymsical (2026) – Album Review

Album: SYS_OPEN:\

Artist: wymsical

Release Date: January 3, 2026

There’s something deeply absurd about living in various houses where jungle music was produced on and off for over twenty years and still having to admit you don’t truly understand its roots. How American. Hours upon hours of chopped Amen breaks and magically sequenced IDM’ish, breakcore’ish, 175bpm’ish electronic improvisations coming from the next room. (SEE: PRODUCTION UNIT XERO) And all the while I’m just thinking, “Hmm, that sounds pretty cool.” Somehow the history stayed blurry – okay it didn’t stay blurry, I simply failed to pursue it. So full of ignorance I wouldn’t know what to ask. Instead I absorbed the sound, learned the tempo and without even knowing it, could recognize jungle music without actually knowing what it was. Stuff like that is one of the most frightening parts of our culture. This condition is not unique. It reflects broader cultural patterns – like the pattern of consumption without understanding the origin of what you’re consuming. It’s why ignorant fuckers discover things that have been around for centuries and slap their own name on it – because they don’t know any better. It’s at times like this you realize it comes down to one universal truth: you don’t know your fucking history.

I guess this is kind of the fun of Micro Genre Music. The idea that we’re all ready and willing to learn about new things without worrying that some contrarian snob is going to scoff at you for not knowing the origins of something that is so elemental to that good ole’ electronic music that you adore. If there is discomfort in realizing how much we have overlooked, let’s turn it into a productive discomfort. Don’t worry my friends, you can read this article and share in your own shame of not knowing where shit came from. I’m not that contrarian snob.

But I’m here to say that while I don’t know much, I know jungle didn’t just spring out of the ground, it’s a journey through culture and time. But I’m not here to talk about the history of jungle, because why the fuck would I talk about that. Instead, I want to talk about what jungle makes me feel – which brings me to wymsical‘s SYS_OPEN:\.

It’s such clean work and it felt good when I listened to it on a Friday night, but feels even better when I re-listened to it on this chilly Saturday morning, brisk air through my window, coffee in my chapped hand, chocolate oat milk doing its modest biochemical work. wymsical is a Jungle/Breakbeat producer, so really what did you expect? The music, for me, is like an old friend of a friend. The record is remarkably clean. The track titles, formatted like Linux terminal commands, reinforce the record’s structural mindset. Each piece feels like an executed instruction: direct, efficient, purposeful. In that space, personal history and cultural history can magically intersect. The joy of understanding genre lineage, when it arrives, will come not as academic victory but as a quiet acknowledgment of how one’s own listening life has unfolded.

Amazing work from wymsical. Can’t wait to listen to their other album COALESCENT. Would absolutely recommend this album.