The November Curated Issue 2025 - Ital Tek - 'Hollowed'
- runoutrecordclub
- Nov 8
- 4 min read
Ital Tek is the recording name of Alan Myson, a producer and composer from Brighton, England, whose career has quietly yet steadily reshaped the edges of electronic music. Emerging in the late 2000s from the post-dubstep scene that also birthed artists like Burial, Zomby, and Mount Kimbie, Myson’s sound has always balanced bass-heavy experimentation with a sense of cinematic, emotional depth.
Signed to Planet Mu, a label known for pushing electronic boundaries, Ital Tek’s early releases—like ‘Cyclical’ and ‘Midnight Colour ‘ — combined IDM and dubstep with melodic sensitivity. But by the time he reached ‘Hollowed’, his fifth studio album, Myson had evolved into something far more ambitious: an artist composing not just beats, but atmospheres; not just sound design, but emotion in abstraction.
‘Hollowed’ is an album that sits between worlds—between electronic and classical, chaos and stillness, darkness and catharsis. It’s a record of weightless melancholy and glacial beauty, drawing from ambient, IDM, and modern composition to create something deeply immersive and human.
A Delicate Balance
The opening track is appropriately named. It builds tension through fragile melodies and low-end rumble, setting the tone for the album’s emotional precision. The synths shimmer like light reflecting off ice—beautiful yet brittle.
Redeemer
One of the record’s most cinematic moments, the track merges thunderous percussion with soaring, orchestral synths. It feels like an arrival—majestic, almost spiritual. Myson’s knack for balancing beauty and intensity shines here.
Beyond Sight
With its echoing bass pulses and ghostly melody, Beyond
Sight evokes the kind of melancholic futurism you’d expect in a sci-fi film. It’s sparse yet deeply affecting, a track that explores space as much as sound.
Terminus
Heavy, mechanical, and rhythmically complex, Terminus introduces the industrial tension that punctuates the album. It’s less about melody and more about propulsion—like gears grinding in slow motion.
Memory Shard
A haunting ambient interlude that feels like fragments of a dream—or perhaps the memory of one. The textures are ethereal, the emotion subdued but present, like static from another world.
Last Breath
A standout moment of vulnerability, Last Breath finds Ital Tek moving away from structured rhythm into emotional freefall. Layers of synths swell and collapse, capturing a kind of controlled fragility that defines the album’s core.
Hymnal
As the title suggests, Hymnal feels sacred. Glacial chords and subtle choral textures create an otherworldly sense of calm. This is Ital Tek at his most minimal and meditative—a moment of respite amid the record’s emotional turbulence.
Solitude
A somber descent into introspection. Its slow, evolving bass tones and faint melodic phrases make it one of the most affecting pieces on Hollowed. It’s both haunting and cleansing, like watching a storm fade over a dark sea.
Vacuum I & II
These twin tracks form the album’s spine. Vacuum I builds with ghostly restraint, while Vacuum II expands it into something grander, almost symphonic. Together, they encapsulate a recurring theme in the album: the tension between emptiness and expression.
Reflection Through Destruction
One of the album’s heaviest moments. Metallic percussion and distorted bass lines churn beneath a haze of reverb, evoking collapse and renewal. It’s a masterclass in controlled chaos.
Infinity Dots
A short, ambient interlude that feels like the echo of the previous track dissipating into space—introspective and fragile.
Jenova
A reference that nods to myth and perhaps the digital sublime (Jenova being both a biblical allusion and a Final Fantasy reference), this track is an expansive, glacial epic. Its slowly shifting harmonies feel like the emotional core of the album—haunting and sublime.
Terminus II
A darker, heavier echo of the earlier Terminus, it brings the record full circle. The beats grind and pulse, but the emotion is all melancholy and release.
Vacuum III
The final track dissolves into ambience—a weightless, drifting conclusion. It feels like the memory of a dream fading into silence, completing Hollowed’s journey from tension to transcendence.
‘Hollowed’ represented a turning point not just for Ital Tek, but for the evolution of post-dubstep and ambient bass music. By 2016, the genre had fragmented—some artists turning toward club minimalism, others toward experimental sound design. Myson chose a different path, merging electronic precision with the emotional gravity of modern classical composition.
The result was an album that transcended its scene. Critics from The Quietus, Resident Advisor, and Clash praised ‘Hollowed’ for its depth and cohesion—calling it “a masterwork of restrained intensity” and “a vision of electronic music’s emotional future.”
Where his earlier work explored rhythm and movement, ‘Hollowed’ explores space and silence. It’s a reflection on alienation in the digital age—music that sounds both deeply human and eerily synthetic. Each track feels like it’s breathing, mourning, or remembering.
Today, ‘Hollowed’ stands as one of Ital Tek’s most defining statements, influencing the new generation of electronic artists who bridge the gap between club culture and introspective sound art.
At its core, it is about emotion rendered in circuitry. It’s a record of contradictions—mechanical yet human, grand yet intimate, abstract yet deeply personal.
Alan Myson doesn’t just make electronic music—he sculpts emotion from noise. inviting listeners to linger in its world of fractured beauty, to find warmth in the cold, and to recognize the quiet humanity that pulses beneath its digital skin.
In a decade crowded with maximalism, Ital Tek’s ‘Hollowed’ remains an understated masterpiece—proof that sometimes, the deepest resonance lies not in sound, but in the silence between.
RRC
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