Welcome back to 2026, the actual 15th year of ID:UD coverage, assuming we make it ’til June (and no reason to think we won’t). It’s been a whole month since our last Tracks post, and as such there’s a whole lot of new music to catch up on. We won’t waste too much of your time on this intro, except to say that we’re as excited as we’ve ever been about the state of Our Thing in 2026, and given the actual number of amazing records we still have yet to write or podcast about that hit our desks in late 2025, we’ll be just as busy as we were before the hiatus. Alright, let’s get on with it, Tracks in 2026, who woulda thought?
Ortrotasce
SRSQ, “Born Alone, Die Alone”
Listening to SRSQ is like speedrunning your first heartbreak, when you felt things clearly, unclouded by experience. That feeling is very very real on new single “Born Alone, Die Alone”, Kennedy Ashlyn’s newest single, taking the shoegaze sound that’s been her stock and trade since the project’s inception and dragging it into a spooky, abandoned cinema of the heart where your fondest and most painful memories play out in front of you on the screen. On the real though, this is another beautiful song from an artist we’re enormous admirers of, and any new music from them is cause for the saddest fuckin’ celebration you can muster.
Ortrotasce, “Muscle Memory (Malfunctioning)”
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been tracking Ortrotasce; there are no guarantees when you cue up a new release, which could fall anywhere in the broad territory including EBM, coldwave, and synthpop, save for high quality production and a road less travelled approach to composition. That holds true with this new single, which takes a stuttering, burpy approach to EBM and couldn’t be further away from the sleek, new romantic spin on synthpop we heard on the Dispatches From Solitude LP in 2024, but delivers on its brief just as well as that release did.
Fractal, “Darkly Born”
Pulling back from some of the more ambient and technoid motifs we’ve heard from them in the past, Poland’s Fractal are digging in hard on soupy, burbling dark electro of a classic cast with the teaser tracks from their forthcoming Hide In The Light LP. Drawing upon the stuttering, oozing excess of mid-period Mentallo and maybe some early Haujobb, tunes like this one aren’t reinventing the wheel but deck it out with all the trimmings we like in this style. We’ve been championing Italian act Kurs for a few years for their ability to zero in on this murky, menacing zone, and they have some company.
Apoptygma Berzerk, “Kathy’s Song (Zone Tripper Remix)”
There’s no lower form of online discourse than “Hey [x] came out [x] years ago, do you feel old now?”, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t get a little heart twinge upon seeing a god damn quarter century reissue of Apoptygma Berzerk’s “Kathy’s Song”, what many folks hold up as the pre-eminent futurepop ballad. And with trance impressario Ferry Corsten returning with a new take on his classic remix of the song (which he’s been spinning out at big EDM festivals), we’re probably not the only ones flashing back to the turn of the millennium when upon hearing the words “connecting to neural net”. The Zone Tripper remix is particularly nice, and might make an appearance in one of our DJ sets in the nearish future.
Nightsister, “In Your Eyes”
Portland’s Nightsister have been cranking out lo-fi darkwave at a steady clip for a minute now, and their new single does a solid job of getting the seemingly simple yet deceptively busy style which lurks beneath a layer of fog and distortion. Between the interplay of sassy synthpop chirps and slurred goth guitar, and that between a laconic drone and high register vocals which feel more 80s AM AOR than gothic banshee shrieks, an oddly dynamic blend of light and shadow emerges. It’s tempting to dream on what Nightsister might sound like with something of a recording budget, but that might spoil the fuzzy charm.
This Is Radio Silence, “Deadlines”
Hey, were you filled to the brim with Holiday cheer in December? Still vibing off of a great New Year’s Eve, and keen to dive into the opportunities of a brand new year? Well strap in, because UK’s industrial strength doomgazers are here to wreck your good mood through sheer oppressive atmosphere wrapped in lucious ambience. Like a loving kiss delivered from the maw of a rabid animal, there’s a tenderness to “Deadlines” that is backed by a dangerous tension, always present and always threatening to drag you under. Truly sick and beautiful stuff from a long-running band we’ve really been remiss in our coverage of. No more.
