Puscha’s ‘Etterath’ was one of my very favourite albums of 2022: densely textured, synth-derived ambient music that was somehow intensely rhythmic despite never wandering towards the dance floor, at once droning and clustered and glittering and bubbling and hypnotic and poisonous, like watching an acid rain storm leave steaming, iridescent pockmarks on a landscape. It was only some time after I championed it that I found out the producer also is from my city, though I am sufficiently disloyal to local musicians that I don’t think that particularly swayed me.
Anyway Puscha finally has a new album and so I have an excuse to talk about him again. ‘Not That Special’ from the title on down seems less like a statement than ‘Etterath’ (if I struggle promoting this guy before it’s probably not gonna get easier) - it’s looser and rangier and more restless - but in essence it’s just more of the same thankfully.
If I had to come up with a reference point for this music it would be Blondes’ fifty-minute single ‘Rein’, which was perhaps their most extreme deviation from straightforward house/techno rhythms, though Pushcha’s music is a touch more somnolent perhaps. Other reference points: recent Vladislav Delay? Monolake with less heavy beats? Mayyyybe Autechre’s ‘Oversteps’?
Anyway, check this album and its predecessor - I find this music incredibly absorbing.
This is from ‘Etterath’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyVFHkVX-6Q
And this is from ‘Not That Special’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4T-PTN45e8
― Tim F, Monday, 16 March 2026 19:39 (four weeks ago)