Troileuk Credit: Courtesy

In an age of massive corporate raves and ubiquity on the airwaves, EDM is now firmly mainstream, and the popular conception of it is big, slick and dumb. For anyone who came up in its pre-commercial days, it’s wrong, maybe even criminal. Electronic dance music is a rabbit hole as deep and branching as heavy metal or punk. But most people wouldn’t know it, including some of the ones dancing to it right now.

Every true fan knows that breaking big is a mixed blessing. When something blows up, the understanding of it goes down. The idea gets blunted and basic. It’s a particular shame if it originated from a rich underground tradition. So it is with electronic dance music today.

Orlando producer Troileuk (pronounced “troy-luke”), however, is one of the champions trying to save EDM from the race to the lowest common denominator and reinstate its original underground spirit. Although a relatively young entrant to the scene, he’s one of the more intriguing local forces with a predilection for the more alternative and cerebral alleys of EDM. In fact, Troileuk’s experimental new album rides the bleeding edge of electronic music.

As a thick, noisy slab of beat science that weaves together the complex architecture of hip-hop, the raw nerve of glitch and the freneticism of Chicago juke and drum & bass, the 14-track Dead at Seventeen LP builds on the foundation that Troileuk has already established. But it’s a decided evolution that reaches beyond electronic music and into underground rock. 

“I was keen on incorporating a no-wave influence on this album, so there’s a whole lot of guitars, albeit very processed and/or played unconventionally, all over the album,” he says. “Listening to things like early Sonic Youth helped me appreciate the guitar as a sound source, just as much as how synths or samples have been incorporated into my previous work.”

The sum total is Troileuk’s darkest, densest, most tactile sound to date. It’s a work less concerned with igniting the dance floor than plumbing the rhythmic depths of consciousness. More than that, this album is an underground reclamation of EDM. Released on Troileuk’s own Illicit Residue label, Dead at Seventeen now streams everywhere and sits atop TLU’s Spotify Playlist.. 

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This article appears in April 1-7, 2026.

Music columnist.