Review: Troum - EmphasYs

Artist: Troum

Album: EmphasYs

Label: Cyclic Law / Transgredient Records

Release date: April 2026

What do you do after you've done everything? A fair question to ask any longstanding artist, including Troum, one of the forefathers of the drone ambient genre who are still going strong three decades into their epic career, as evidenced by their headlining live performance at Phobos 2025, which I was fortunate enough to witness in person. Judging by EmphasYs, Troum's latest album released by none other than the mighty Cyclic Law in collaboration with Transgredient Records (a sub-label of Drone Records), they wouldn't have any trouble answering that question - you simply do something new.

EmphasYs departs from a bold premise - constructing a drone album not out of a plethora of intertwined layers as usual, but having a single instrument as a centre of gravity that naturally attracts and accretes other elements onto itself. Of course, the latter must have been creative hell for a duo accustomed to freely associating - and dissociating - elements from their compositions as they saw fit; one could even say that self-imposing any restrictions goes directly against the core tenet of Troum's past work. However, sometimes less is more, and that's exactly the learning that EmphasYs manages to impart. Don't mistake less for short, though - most tracks on here are pushing the 8-minute mark, and with good reason, since an album constructed this organically requires sufficient space to breathe and develop. Named after various hues of basic colours (as reflected by the imaginative and out-of-the-box cover art), each track on this album is built around a single instrument, ranging from staples such as electric guitar, over less obvious choices such as didgeridoo, to utter outliers such as zither and saxophone. The approach generates an almost synesthetic experience, focusing less on melody and more on timbre and texture, providing a vivid, but ultimately sufficiently empty canvas for the listener to fill with their own content and impressions. As one is accustomed to when it comes to Troum, tracks flow seamlessly one into another despite the sheer variety of compositional approaches, and the tracks themselves are carefully, but thickly layered to provide for an engaging experience. The longest track on the album, Schwarzgrün, is a particularly poignant example thereof, and I caught myself checking on multiple occasions if 12 minutes have really already flown by. Delectably (at least to my ears), the final track Bursztyn, and also the only one named after a place and not a colour, is perhaps the most concrete track of the album and a throwback to a more classic Troum sound full of melancholy that we haven't heard in a while.

Other than being a terrific album in its own right, I have to call EmphasYs a return to form for Troum as well. It's been many years since I've heard a solo album in this duo's admittedly prolific back catalogue that was this focused and transcendent. Despite its relatively restricted approach to songwriting, EmphasYs has managed to grow and flesh out into one of the lushest, most engaging and most complete entries in Troum's discography, one that I'll be spinning for many months. Looks like the dream is still very much alive.

Rating: 9/10