Since 2021, the Australian artist and producer Timothy and the Apocalypse has been taking over the ambient trip-hop scene; the cinematically lush layers in his downtempo discography soundtrack society as we cling to the precipice of our destruction. In his fourth album, All Busted Up, written between the dystopian motifs are memorandums of what it means to be human on the edge of blind capitalist collective masochism.
After track one, Speed of Life, which mournfully ponders how much sand stands between our demise, inspired by the loss of his mother, the LP slams into the sexier than The Deftones groove-driven piece, The Reckoner. The angularly harbingering guitars and fervid breakbeats cloaked under reverb definitively prove that visceralism isn’t out of the producer’s remit.
Track three, When You Dream, lays the barely lucid psychedelia on thick as the Lynchian soundscape drifts through its arrestingly jarring progressions that distort jazzy timbres and soul-soaked ethereal female vocals. In all sincerity, it is enough to make Portishead sound pedestrian.
Track four, Driving Me Crazy, lends itself well to the titular illusion; the dreamy descent into surrealism drifts through subversively glitchy progressions in the extended piece, which keeps you hooked into the artfully experimental beguile. If any soundscape on the LP will make a meal of your rhythmic pulses while vindicating your own insanity, it is this sonic gem.
Track five, Saved, introduces some darker ambient industrial tones while still scribing the sonic signature that the preceding singles have allowed you to become accustomed to before Beautiful Chaos melodically exhibits the relenting capacity of awe in times of mass disillusion. With nuanced Eastern flavour worked into the kaleidoscopic rhythms, Timothy and The Apocalypse broke the monocultural mould to deliver his staunch fanbase from entropy.
Dreaming When You Hold Me could only be described as a leftfield electronica dream for the way the transcendence binds with the experimental gravitas permitted by the strobing synths, a sonic theme which continues through to track eight, Only You; the deliciously distorted soundscape is a meditation in tranquil obscurity.
By closing the LP on Nothing Forever, Timothy and the Apocalypse sealed the album’s fate, allowing it to resonate as one of the most seminal ambient electronica records of the year. It’s the ultimate audial space for reflection on all the instrumental introspection that preceded it. If you want to push the boundaries of your apocalyptic perception, take a dive – you won’t regret it.
All Busted Up will officially release on April 14th; catch it on Spotify & SoundCloud.
Review by Amelia Vandergast