Marie Davidson has made a techno album that makes you dance, makes you think, and makes you laugh. City of Clowns is a satirical concept album about surveillance capitalism that absolutely slaps. It’s clever, sinister, full of groove, and it may well be a definitive electronic release of the 2020s.

The brilliance lies in how Davidson places herself in the role of the villain. She’s not singing about tech billionaires and data harvesting - she becomes them. Her voice crackles through the speakers like a cartoonish Big Brother, narrating your digital entrapment with the wry wit of someone who understands how absurd and terrifying this moment really is, mocking and teasing - speaking as the system that’s watching you, profiling you, and reshaping your desires. It’s dark comedy, delivered with total control. Techno is famously difficult to humanise, but Davidson pulls it off with style and charm. City of Clowns is full of character. The sound design is cheeky and surprising, filled with huge lurching bass, and silence that says as much as noise.

Stretching across a wide tempo range, there are slow, sticky grooves and frantic bangers. Electro, EBM, minimal tech, acid mutations, part of the joy is that Davidson doesn’t care about classification, and every beat bangs. There’s no doom spiral here, no wallowing in dystopia. Davidson is laughing at the absurdity of digital life, and inviting you to dance through it with her. City of Clowns feels like the natural heir to Kraftwerk’s robotic critiques, but steeped in our specific 2025 mess. It’s satire you can sweat to, and it’s one of the most invigorating records of the year.