SickElixir is obsessed with the threshold between the living and cold machinery. Across 14 tracks Blawan toys with noises that sound like animals groaning, humans whispering, struck pipes, factory pistons, dolphins cackling and weather system malfunctions all at the same time, perpetually caught between the organic and the mechanical.

For all its bizarre sound design, this is fundamentally techno that makes you move first and ask questions later, setting the tone instantly on GL Lights with a warped vocal sample and a foghorn sub. It all feels half-human, half-industrial. NOS uses whispered syllables instead of a hi-hat pattern as skittering vocals become the rhythmic spine and a thick-fuzz filtered bass slithers behind. Rabbit Hole toys with footwork-adjacent momentum using a vocal hook from Monstera Black that loops in a dizzying descent. WTF is pure warehouse intimidation as a percussive vocal chunk is fed through monstrous processing to produce a guttural, speaker-rattling low end. Casch swerves into a drum’n’bass tempo without borrowing the language, drifting closer to the work of DjRUM with fizzy swipes that feel like crackling pylons or an electrical storm building overhead. It’s one of the most evocative tracks, conjuring an image of heavy black clouds charged with static that never quite break. Birf Song is groovy and bubbling but unsettling with an eerie little melody that smirks and shivers like Aphex Twin. During Elevation is a horror-themed glitch-hop swagger with a synth line that echoes A Nightmare on Elm Street’s playground chant, tense and playfully threatening. Don’t Worry We Happy uses a synth line sculpted to sound like an organic human squelch, uncanny and grotesque. Style Teef bangs like a Squarepusher frenzy of unexpected ricochet hits, Sonkind is slow and cavernous enough to rearrange your internal organs if you stood too close to the big system sub, and TCP Burn splutters and mutates with a swipey bass that garbles into digital mush as bit-crushed voices chatter and glitch around the edges. Eerie, creepy, and totally committed to warping your sense of what counts as dance music.