Unruly Disturbance Returns With Frisson, an Ambient Techno Record That Slowly Remembers the Beat

Tom Collingburn spent nearly two decades close to the kick drum. He started DJing at 14, played Creamfields and Gottwood, held down nights at Sankeys, and released big-room techno as half of Autophase on Global Underground and Curfew. Then he walked away from all of it. Under the name Unruly Disturbance, he put out two albums, Music for Scenes and Melodic Drone, long-form ambient works that had no interest in the dancefloor. Frisson, his new record on Not Yet Remembered, is the first time he’s felt comfortable letting rhythm back in.

The album doesn’t return to the peak-time energy of his early years. It gestures toward ambient techno, but the beats are patient and weightless, tucked under washes of melody and texture. Tracks six, eight, and twelve pick up a 4/4 pulse and shuffled off-rhythms, yet they never push to the front. The drums serve the atmosphere, a detail Collingburn handles with a light touch that comes from knowing exactly when to hold back.

Poet Mat Riches appears on three pieces, his voice a steady narrative thread across an otherwise instrumental record. The opener, the midpoint, and the outro are rooted in his words, offering something tangible while the music drifts around him. On the title track, Collingburn fills every space with faint voices and shifting timbres. The melodic lines are tight, the production precise, and the mood sits somewhere between Burial’s dark restraint and Lorn’s weighty textures. It’s the sharpest piece on the album.

The title points to the chills that music can provoke, a physical reaction Collingburn chased throughout the writing. “Willows Lament” gets close, with a strong melodic current and drums that break through without overpowering the scene. Frisson doesn’t aim to recreate a club night. It treats rhythm as a shade on a wider palette, proof that his years behind the decks weren’t abandoned, only reshaped into something quieter.