Review: Troy - Echoes of Ancient life

In the middle of winter, it can be hard to make it from one interior to the next—especially when it means heading out to the club for some icy techno. On his latest release for David Sumner’s Infrastructure New York label, Troy makes a convincing case for tunneling straight to the dance floor, bypassing the freezing temperatures outside entirely.

The techno on Echoes of Ancient Life burrows deep into the earth at a frequency that leaves body movers sweating on their descent to the core. Along the way, they encounter sharp metallic fragments, telepathic earth slugs, and artifacts that speak of a past unknown to surface dwellers. This is a psychedelic tunnel aimed directly at the planet’s heated center.

The warmth is glorious. You can almost feel the sparks flying from the pistons of the tunneling machine on tracks like “Dream Stalker” and “Rogue Planet,” where the acid lines burn particularly hot. “Chasmic,” meanwhile, seems to pry open the glowing red rock itself, revealing caverns where magma flows asymmetrically in wild, uninhibited directions—yet always converging on the same beating heart at the core.

These tracks are perfectly suited to keep the blood moving on icy nights, when the heat of the dance floor condenses into sweat against bare concrete walls. Long before the industrial comforts that make modern winters tolerable, it’s easy to imagine similar rituals—music, movement, bodies in close orbit—keeping ancient peoples warm. Those echoes still reverberate, pulsing quietly beneath the surface of the present.