CF Review | Dissolving Spaces, Circular Loops: Ficture’s Tart Opens the Door to Grudge Against Beauty on EC Underground

EC Underground is a multidisciplinary collective, music label and talent agency based in South Florida. Since 2018 it has bridged European and UK electronic music in the US, fusing electro, electronica, IDM, glitch, techno and drum & bass, and supports creative voices worldwide through live events and its ambient sub-label EQ. Igloo Magazine has called it a hub for creative exploration and positive self-expression, and the go-to independent label for international talent.

Gábor Tokár is a producer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist who bridges organic live instrumentation with advanced electronic manipulation. He draws inspiration from psychological patterns and architectural forms, and is also a live session player and core drummer for several Hungarian alternative acts. As Ficture he translates human behavioral instincts into raw, immersive auditory journeys. His sound sits where the pulse of live drumming meets advanced computer music: fans of Shigeto or Jaga Jazzist will hear jazz-inflected rhythms anchoring micro-glitch details, listeners of Tycho will recognize the warm analog synth palettes and cinematic atmospheres, and in the vein of Max Cooper or Rival Consoles he approaches sound in a strongly audiovisual way.

What do we do when we keep solving the same problem and mistake the circle for a road? Ficture, the project of Budapest-based producer and sound designer Gábor Tokár, builds an entire release around that question. Tart (Single & Remixes) marks his debut on EC Underground (ECU) and arrived on November 6, 2026 as a digital maxi-single / remix EP (ECU180), moving through IDM, textured glitch, downtempo, experimental bass and electronica.

“Tart” is an immersive track that blurs the line between precise digital composition and fragile, acoustic-like textures. It unfolds as a slow-burning investigation into repetition, tension and release, reflecting on our instinct to solve problems and on the circular loops we mistake for progress. It also introduces the conceptual world of Ficture’s forthcoming audiovisual album Grudge Against Beauty, set for a full global release in spring 2027.

The album behind the single is called Grudge Against Beauty and works as an immersive audio diary that traces Ficture’s evolution through a self-reflective lens, exploring the physical and mental links between different phases of life. It is structured as a continuous, cross-genre journey, divided into thematic acts by four brief interludes, the Hiatuses. Its central pillar is absolute artistic freedom, and its cohesion comes from raw authenticity and curiosity. That lets complex, progressive-rock structures meet alternative pop sensibilities, with experimental production, shifting dynamics and vocal elements examining the tension between expectation and reality, until, in the end, everything finds its place. The full tracklist runs: Hiatus 1, Tart (Official video), News, Wheels On Meals, Upwards (feat. Viktória Salgó), Hiatus 2, Care (feat. Viktória Salgó), Trinity Travels, Hiatus 3, Beam, The Difference, Boufkla and Hiatus 4.

The release comes with a custom Official Music Video by Hungarian visual artist Márton Gerencsér. He developed a reactive visual storyline specifically for “Tart,” animating 3D point clouds of real spaces that dissolve and glitch in direct response to the track’s audio frequencies. A creative brief on how artist and visualist built this world together accompanies the release.

This single is accompanied by a remix package that is collaborative, with reworks from six producers across the globe. Each takes Ficture’s intricate acoustic-digital loops in a different direction: heavier dancefloor momentum, stripped-back glitch structures, carefully deconstructed textures. Here is how we heard it.

The Tart Original Mix is a blend of subtly broken rhythms that also carry swagger and defiant attitude, delivered with precision. That duality is very suggestive, and it comes with spectacular sound design. By the end, it shows how far the track goes: all the way to the absolute.

Based in Fujiyoshida, Yu Miyashita treats music as a rigorous search for structural truth, and is known for cerebral, pointillistic glitch-techno on labels such as World’s End Girlfriend’s Virgin Babylon Records. This is his first formal appearance on ECU. His remix settles over futuristic worlds where hope tends to zero and the environment leans toward pessimism. But, following what a Latin American writer once said about the virtue of the pessimist, that he is simply a well-informed optimist, the sound also carries its hopes, firmly anchored in latency.

French producer and multi-instrumentalist Christian Gonzalez, known as Grosso Gadgetto, was first discovered through his work on the Mahorka imprint. He makes his official ECU debut here, brought in purely out of a long-time love for his immersive sonic landscapes. His remix intensifies the semantics of the previous one, with a marked, deep cinematic character, set over ambient and medieval music that digs into a striking past future.

Originally from Padova and now rooted in London’s experimental underground, Marco Simioni is known for precise sound design, spatial detail and finely tuned tension, with releases on cult labels such as Detroit Underground and Mille Plateaux. His remix introduces a hiatus of reality in which the usual dimensions are deconstructed, placing us in cybernetic worlds reminiscent of Tron: Legacy, where virtuality and digitality become orthogonal guidelines of reality. Perhaps the sound works, conceptually, as an observation of our present and its imminent future. It also paves the way for his first physical release on ECU, ahead of his forthcoming CD and digital full-length ¥¥¥¥¥, due at the end of the year.

A long-standing figure of the international IDM underground and formerly one-half of Funckarma, Roel Funcken brings his signature, highly detailed approach. His bond with ECU is already strong, through the Data Curation 1 (2022) and Data Curation 2 (2024) compilations and his current Kine 3. His remix focuses, down to the millimeter, on the hiatus opened by the previous one. Here we go all the way into it, at a nanometric depth that isolates us from our surroundings and carries us into ethereal, almost idyllic but also futuristic realities, precise with the sound that has been handled so consistently, versatilely and unitarily throughout.

This was our premiere for the release. Bulgarian multi-disciplinary producer Ivan Shopov, also known as Balkansky, fuses deep cinematic atmospheres with heavy, subterranean bass. His relationship with the label grew naturally out of the WECU community, a collaborative mix project and ongoing exchanges, and this is his first official remix for ECU. The remix is a long, extended release of tension that distorts our perception of reality to almost delirious levels, always in the good sense. The sound design stretches the frame of that reality and transforms perception until it succumbs to the design. The task is nearly complete.

Finally, Berlin-based Serge Geyzel draws on his classical and jazz piano background to weave poetic melodic lines into driving electronic structures, with releases on imprints like Touched Music and Analogical Force. He returns as a trusted member of the label family after his 2025 EP Visions I Lost (ECU126). His remix gives us some relief from such a changing, futuristic, pessimistic, uncoupled environment, but it doesn’t return us to the comfort we started from. This is where we’d like to sum up the release. It is a sound that is not condescending to the listener. It obliges and forces us to pay attention to sound, something that in these times is too often set aside. Congratulations.

Alongside the EP comes a Sample Pack built straight from the “Tart” master sessions: 70 WAV samples at 126 BPM, with bass pulses, glitchy drums, melodic fragments, atmospheres and FX, all 100% royalty-free and cut from the same hybrid acoustic/digital sound world. It is “Name Your Price” on Ficture’s Bandcamp, for producers into IDM, textured glitch, downtempo and experimental bass who would rather start from character than from presets, and it can be used in tracks, remixes and live sets. It is the first step in a small “digital artifacts” series around “Tart,” with a dedicated VJ loops pack planned for live visuals down the line.

Label: EC Underground
Artist: Ficture (Gábor Tokár)
Title: Tart (Single & Remixes)
Catalogue: ECU180
Format: Digital Maxi-Single / Remix EP
Genre: IDM, Textured Glitch, Downtempo, Experimental Bass, Electronica

Release Date: November 6, 2026
Support & Buy: music.imusician.pro/a/88eHghS9

Tracklist
1. Tart (Original Mix)
2. Tart (Yaporigami Remix)
3. Tart (Grosso Gadgetto Remix)
4. Tart (Marco Simioni Remix)
5. Tart (Roel Funcken Remix)
6. Tart (Ivan Shopov Remix)
7. Tart (Serge Geyzel Remix)

Credits
Written and Produced by Gábor Tokár
Mastering by exm, exmat.bandcamp.com
Artwork by: Laura Czuczor, www.instagram.com/laura_czuczor
Audio visuals by: Márton Gerencsér, martongerencser.com
© Gábor Tokár ℗ 2026-2027 EC Underground LLC

Ficture

Yaporigami

Grosso Gadgetto

Marco Simioni

Roel Funcken

Ivan Shopov

Serge Geyzel

Bandcamp