Estoc - Are We Doomed to Bow to the Stupid and Cruel? (2025)

estoc presents the newest manifestation of her artistic practice: an attempt to make sense of a world seemingly hellbent on violence as its chief export. Art written as a direct response to the conditions felt both at home and watched across oceans through a phone. This album exists as an acknowledgement that our fates are inextricably intertwined, yet, our (temporary) comfort is extracted from the third world. Across 10 tracks the question is: Are We Doomed to Bow to the Stupid and Cruel? Answers are posed and then brushed away, like dust from a shelf. By the end, nothing is settled and we are left with more questions than answers.

Collaborators and co-conspirators weave in and out of the compositions, their presence felt as both adornment, and as integral infrastructure. DJ Haram opens the album with ‘Heretic’. Her voice swims through crackling noise, throbbing basslines — a guided meditation as much as a late night conversation. ‘The Weight’ follows directly after. AZADI.mp3’s smoky chants hover in the air above a smouldering fire of trip hop drums and synths, devolving to a miasma of distortion and swirling screams. The next song, ‘Where Do We Go Now’, builds and swells with rumbling synths, arriving fully as breaks crash forward and Military Scientist’s voice cries out over a chaotic sea. The first solo composition of the album comes in the form of ‘The Poison of the Centre’. A solemn yet off-balance meditation of drums, cut over an uneven and shifting beat. This rhythmic fervor is multiplied tenfold on ‘No Glory’, a harsh bath of bass and drums, constantly fighting for space to breathe through the manufactured scarcity of the mix.

‘Scorched Earth’ lends us our first breath of fresh air. Mia Carucci sings a lullaby over growling instrumentation, Exploited Body’s co-production threatening to boil over at any moment. A momentary break in the clouds, a beam of sunlight shines through before being quickly swallowed back up by the storm; gone as quickly as it came. It is here that we plunge even deeper, as the heartbeat of ‘Heaven Defined for Another’ rattles through. Machinery and exasperated breathing become inexorable, both driven to their breaking point by a rolling wave of thunder. This mechanical terror roils forth on ‘Cradling’. Miedo Total sets clattering steam and cogs over crying strings that threaten to throw themselves to pieces. The penultimate entry sees Violence lend voice and production to ‘Bones Broken, Many Things Left Unsaid’ — a deep terror lurches, shuddering and crashing like ocean waves. A gentle chorus of strings ushers in the final piece, ‘Scratch a Liberal’ — a rare, but fleeting moment of tenderness on the album. Heavy towers of bass throw the composition into shadow, tension builds and grows before collapsing in on itself, revealing the fear and violence at the core of this project. At the end of it all, we are left alone to contemplate what is to be done.