Postdrone’s New Album ‘unsure’ Finds Intimacy in the Experimental

Since his shrouded arrival with 2021 album, Ready for Nothing, Postdrone has been one of the most unique voices to emerge out of Egypt’s growing experimental abyss. Sometimes structureless, always atmospheric and eternally experiential, his particular type of immersive, ambient sound design offers a shock to the system of a wider music scene often sustained by feeling sentiments and algorithmic trends.

After a hiatus, his latest release, the eight-track unsure, is still firmly planted in the muddiest pockets of his mind, but shows an evolution from his rasping debut. Where Ready For Nothing felt deeply introspective and instinctual, and 2022’s WIPT felt meditatively and deliberately detached, unsure feels more grounded in collective reality and external reference points.

In parts, it glitters rather than grinds, something demonstrated right away in the opening track ‘925’. Granted, tracks like '2003', 'Slodub' and closer, ‘Khodni’, retain elements of the industrial, distorted, unnerving noise that marked his debut - but the opener, alongside 'Soulsek', 'Amour Fou' and 'Skip', are built on more collectively recognisable, maybe even intimate, musical markers. Taken as a whole, the album is well-paced - it ebbs and flows between the two sounds expertly, with some tracks testing you and demanding engagement, while others draw you in organically.

Ultimately, though, trying to rationalise or nail down the manifestation of Postdrone’s musical outlook is a fool's errand. It’s too uninhibited, too organic, too inherently tied to his auteurist approach. In a world where the discourse of artist-audience interaction champions clear and direct connection, Postdrone harks back to the classic, mid-20th century philosophical idea that the only understanding that matters is the artist's own. unsure exists not to be decoded, but simply to be, even if it is more markedly more intimate than insular.