For Kaskade, undux marks both a return and a reckoning. The producer’s first studio album since 2015’s Automatic arrives after a decade peppered with career highlights, among them a high-profile collaboration with deadmau5 as Kx5 (which spawned a Grammy-nominated album and a record-breaking concert at the LA Coliseum) and becoming the first DJ to perform during the Super Bowl. But it wasn’t all fist pumps and festival drops: Behind the scenes, he was experiencing personal upheaval, including the end of his marriage. As Kaskade navigated this change, he started—and subsequently shelved—multiple drafts of his next album. undux chronicles that journey from heartbreak to healing, its title a play on Kaskade’s Redux project, which strips dance music down to its bones: a groove and a feeling. The ache of loss is palpable in quieter songs like “started over”, UK garage steeped in sombre piano chords and strings, and “if only”, where he wonders, “What the hell just happened?” Even in festival mode, his songs remain as emotional as they are explosive, inviting crowd cry-alongs and purging pain on soaring covers of Bonnie Raitt (“i can’t make you love me”) and Aretha Franklin (“chain of fools”) and laying down his own vocals over the roiling melodic techno of “obvious”. But hope blooms from cynicism on “unspoken”, and while “DNCR” finds joy in meaningful connection, “can i surrender” is straight-up spiritual—catharsis cloaked in church choir chants and a powerful admission: “I’m feeling it all.”