7/10

After nearly two decades of charting his own strange, singular orbit, M.D. Trello, the hermit architect behind The Kiss That Took A Trip, returns with 'Horror Vacui', a sprawling, mercurial odyssey that feels like opening a time capsule from a parallel universe. It’s a single composition, but calling it “one song” feels almost dishonest; this is a living mosaic of Trello’s entire sonic DNA, stitched together with the fevered logic of a dream that refuses to fade upon waking.

Trello has always existed just outside genre and convention, a self-professed non-musician who creates worlds from circuitry, texture, and instinct rather than traditional craft. And 'Horror Vacui' magnifies that ethos. What began as a companion to 'Victims of the Avantgarde' mutated into something too unruly to force back into its original shape. Years of setbacks and technical hurdles only seemed to feed the piece’s energy, until the result is a 20-year scrapbook of experiments, obsessions, and philosophies colliding in full colour.

The track moves like a restless spirit, drifting through moods and genres with a sense of controlled delirium. One moment you’re suspended in an ambient haze that feels almost medicinal; the next, you’re thrown headfirst into a riptide of distortion. There are passages that nod toward his early post-rock explorations, moments of whimsical lounge-like levity, sudden eruptions of noise, and indie-pop fragments that flicker by like ghosts of songs never fully born. It’s messy, intentional, defiantly non-linear, and that’s precisely why it works.

What makes 'Horror Vacui' so compelling is its refusal to explain itself. Trello leans into instinct, where melodies appear like apparitions, disappear without warning, and then reemerging transformed. It’s a piece that trusts us to surrender control, and to follow the labyrinth wherever it leads.

In an era obsessed with instant hooks and tidy playlists, The Kiss That Took A Trip remains a glorious anomaly. Trello continues to build a catalogue meant for deep listening rather than fast consumption. 'Horror Vacui' captures that mission more clearly than anything he’s released before. It feels like a panoramic survey of an artist who has spent nearly twenty years carving out a pocket universe entirely his own, one where curiosity outranks perfection and exploration is the only rule that matters.