Picture – Eeeeeeee [Short Span]

Can we already talk about one of the electronic albums of the year? Eeeeeeee, Picture‘s new record, makes a strong case. The Danish producer, born Natal Zaks and known for countless aliases and parallel projects, takes a decisive turn here, reshaping his path through ambient and dub techno with the mindset of a true experimenter. From the deep house of DJ Central to the cyber-fluid ambient of Palta, through key collaborations such as the warehouse-leaning outsider house of Regelbau, the cloud-like textures of Hi Mount, and the futuristic rhythmic constructions of Nl100, Zaks’ career has expanded.

With the Picture alias, launched in the early 2020s, he released Untitled in 2022, a tape on Help Recordings, the label he co-founded with DJ Sports: a cassette driven by tech euphoria, marked by a lo-fi essentialism that shaped much of his earlier work. In this light, Eeeeeeee lands like a jolt. The sound sharpens decisively, and the opener Waaaaaaaa immediately sets the tone: the warmth of magnetic tape disappears and, after a long cybernetic intro, a punchy yet fluid loop takes form, constantly reshaped through shifting filters. It sounds like hardgroove slowed down, propelled by a distinctly experimental impulse.

Tyyyyyyyyy revisits patterns rooted in 1990s tradition and reshapes them with a bouncy yet cerebral approach, as if the club were merely a hypothesis rather than a physical space. Heeeeeeee unfolds like an ambient dub tremor. Its rhythmic pattern recalls Enforcement by Cyrus, while a meditative pad stretches above it, subtly shifting its weight. It feels like imagining a strain of deep techno conceived before the genre fully existed, yet performed with technologies more advanced than our own.

On Keeeeeee, an opening loop evokes Jeff Mills’ Purpose Maker era before expanding into a dub-driven anthem reminiscent of Deepchord. These are not nostalgic nods but tensions reshaped within a sharper framework. Yeeeeeee develops through gradual timbral shifts over a soft seismic undercurrent, while Qeeeeeeee sketches opaque landscapes punctuated by futuristic fragments built on unconventional structures. Delivered to Short Span, the album pushes against the boundaries of an entire scene.