Ziúr’s music has always been hard to pin down. A staple of Berlin’s nightlife, the musician, producer, and DJ has spent decades carving out a sound that faithfully represents her journey. She’s sung, played guitar and drums, and reduced club music to a smoldering cinder; with Antifate, her third album under the Ziúr moniker, she approaches electronic music without preciousness or genre reverence. 2019’s acclaimed ATO had re-introduced songs back into her own canon, contorting her voice over an undulating electronic backdrop. On Antifate, she takes this idea further, pushing abstract pop forms into digital euphoria’s mists and extracting unexpected instrumental adornments from clouds of distorted rhythms. Electronic instrumentation melts into acoustic sounds and vice-versa, creating an organic, breathing universe that is entirely Ziúr’s own. Antifate is an abstract reference to the mythical Land of Cockaigne, a utopia where wine flows freely and houses are made of cakes, which provided a fantasy of escape for medieval peasants. As the space between our private worlds grows larger, this fantasy becomes seductive again – a place where we feel free, with the people who allow us this freedom. With this in mind, Ziúr crafts a soundtrack that is both fantastic and magical, articulated around the idea of proximity and connection at a time when distance is mandatory. Ghostly vocals resonate wordlessly over rattling beats and dubby basslines on the opener "Alive, Unless?". While the album's title track introduces an epic brass band, with a choir of voices echoing in shimmering synth pearls and volcanic kicks. Antifate is at times almost theatrical, an obvious trait on the Talk Talk-esque "Fringe Casual" with its dreamy piano and plucked bass and on the closing track "The Carry", where the flute is introduced into Ziúr's ever-expanding narrative. It's tempting to say that Ziúr was destined to make this album, but Antifate rejects that concept. Rather, it's the album Ziúr needed to make at this time, surrounded by the people who could offer her the space to do so. In mapping out her mythical paradise, Ziúr has produced an album that is deeply tender and inescapably human, an album about freedom. The album is mixed by James Ginzburg and mastered by Rashad Becker, the cover artwork was designed by Stefan Fähler.