Ai/mB’s The Oracle Tree doesn’t just arrive, it materializes like some shimmering musically-mechanical organism crawling out of a dream you forgot you had, dripping with nostalgia, acid, and the unmistakable aroma of IDM’s golden age. It’s the kind of record that reminds you why this genre ever mattered in the first place: The meticulous craft, the emotional circuitry, the sense that machines aren’t just tools but co‑conspirator partners. With Anders Ilar bringing his trademark depth and textured, melodic insanity and Martin Bolton injecting his melodic atmosphere and jarring tension, the duo feel like two halves of a single neural network firing at full voltage. Eleven tracks, each its own narrative, all orbiting the same ancient, glowing trunk of the titular Oracle Tree.
The album kicks the door open with Pseudoscience, a track that feels like someone unearthed a lost DAT from 1997 and fed it through a quantum processor. Deep kicks, glitchy filigree, and a bass synth that rolls in like a storm front—this is pure braindance manna. Then Windowpane swerves hard into neon‑lit retro‑futurism, the kind of 80s sci‑fi chase sequence where the villain is a chrome‑skinned android and the city is permanently drenched in rain. Pads bloom, arps ascend, and suddenly you’re weightless, suspended in a world that feels familiar but never derivative. By the time Drifting Past arrives with its distorted breakbeats and delicate plucked melodies, the album has already established its central thesis: contrast is king, and beauty thrives in the tension between soft and brutal.
The middle stretch is where The Oracle Tree really starts flexing. Psionic Pilot is airy, almost deceptively simple, like a breeze carrying the scent of something extraterrestrial. And then drops Luna Bella Acid, a track so good it should come with a warning label. This may be the album’s crown jewel, a masterclass in emotional IDM: wistful melodies, shifting breakbeats, and a bassline that mutates between pulse and acid squelch like it’s alive. Chwech and Embryotic Reprogramming continue the acid‑techno flirtation, but with that unmistakable IDM brain‑tickle-business: Reverse‑speech samples, metallic pads, and rhythms that feel like they’re trying to communicate with you in a language you almost understand.
When the title track Oracle Tree arrives, it feels like stepping into the heart of the album’s mythology. Detuned oboe‑like pads drift in like ghosts from a forgotten childhood memory, hollow, warm and eerie all at once. The drums enter gently, respectful of the atmosphere, and then a reverb‑soaked 303 line slithers into view. It’s wistful, hopeful, and quietly devastating: A sonic photograph of something you can’t quite name but desperately miss. Aetherflight and Paws Forward follow with more experimental textures: rapid‑fire basslines, half‑time drums, detuned synths wobbling like they’re melting in the sun. They’re looser, stranger, but still unmistakably part of the same ecosystem.
And then the finale, Long Way From Home. No drums, no urgency, just pure, weightless ambience. Pads swell like morning fog, strings shimmer, and the melody drifts upward until you feel like you’re ascending with it. It’s the perfect closer, a gentle release after the album’s emotional tension and rhythmic intensity, a reminder that Braindance doesn’t always need to be frenetic to be transcendent. It leaves you suspended above the clouds, staring down at the world with new eyes.
In the end, The Oracle Tree isn’t just a great IDM album. It’s a statement, a celebration, a love letter to the genre’s past and a confident stride into its future. Anders Ilar and Martin Bolton have crafted a record that is so deeply human that it is feels like it deserves its own Birth Certificate. It’s living, breathing braindance with a soul, acid with a heartbeat, nostalgia without stagnation. And it absolutely rips.
The Oracle Tree by Ai/mB was released 16 January 2026 on Touched Revolutions