With Soundtrack to the Daily Agenda, Ukrainian producer and multi-instrumentalist Anton Shiferson — the creative force behind Ship Her Son — delivers a striking, immersive album that transforms the anxiety of daily existence into a cinematic, post-industrial ritual. The record, his second full-length since the 2021 debut Essen, is a bold evolution: heavier, more physical, yet intricately emotional. It’s an album that doesn’t simply depict a day in the life of a man under pressure — it makes the listener feel the friction of his every thought, pulse, and breath.
Composed and recorded over nearly three years in Lviv, Soundtrack to the Daily Agenda unfolds as a sonic diary of quiet panic. Each track captures a specific fragment of routine — the dread of morning after too little sleep, the desperate attempt to maintain irony through exhaustion, the slow drift between apathy and hyper-awareness. This narrative gives the record an almost filmic coherence, mirroring the cycles of tension and release that shape a restless mind navigating modern survival.
From the opening moments, the album establishes its dual nature — dense yet deliberate, mechanical yet human. Shiferson constructs rhythms that feel like clockwork mechanisms breaking under strain: distorted, syncopated beats pulse against a backdrop of metallic reverb, industrial percussion, and layers of ambient noise. The rhythm section functions as both propulsion and burden, symbolizing the relentless ticking of time that defines the “daily agenda.” These rhythms rarely offer catharsis; instead, they circle obsessively, mirroring the routines that entrap their protagonist.
Synths play a crucial role in defining the album’s emotional architecture. Shiferson’s approach favors texture over melody, weaving granular layers of analog warmth, digital harshness, and vaporous ambience. In some moments, the synths shimmer like fluorescent lights in an empty office; in others, they collapse into drones that evoke urban decay or internal collapse. They are not merely instruments but environments — unstable emotional spaces where clarity dissolves into distortion. This interplay between control and disintegration runs through the entire record, grounding its post-industrial pulse in deeply psychological terrain.
The inclusion of live guest vocals marks a major departure from Ship Her Son’s previous reliance on sampled fragments. Here, voices from across the Ukrainian scene — Stepan Burban (Palindrom), Anton Slepakov (ВГНВЖ, warнякання), Eugene Tymchyk (Septa, The Nietzsche, АНТАЙТЛД), Oleksandr Kuts (Vøvk), and Divuar (Zwyntar, Old Cat’s Drama) — add a raw, corporeal layer to the otherwise mechanical framework. Their performances range from whispered confessions to guttural howls, grounding the music’s abstraction in unmistakable human presence. Rather than individual statements, these vocals form a collective expression of exhaustion and defiance — a chorus of ordinary lives confronting extraordinary pressure.
Tracks fluctuate between claustrophobic minimalism and explosive density. The techno and noise-rock elements interlock seamlessly, creating moments where dancefloor energy mutates into something more confrontational, almost ritualistic. Yet amid the aggression lies a quiet, introspective core: stretches of ambient stillness where time seems suspended, revealing the fragile calm between breakdowns. These passages evoke the album’s conceptual duality — the attempt to find serenity inside chaos, to breathe through the machinery of daily life.
The production’s physicality is undeniable. Each kick and snare lands with tactile precision, while distorted basslines grind like rusted gears. Yet the mix leaves room for air and silence, emphasizing contrast rather than sheer volume. This dynamic control gives the record its narrative pulse — the feeling of a day advancing inexorably toward exhaustion.
Visually and thematically, Soundtrack to the Daily Agenda extends Ship Her Son’s fascination with blurred realities. The cover image — a solitary figure in headphones watching a distant fire — encapsulates the album’s emotional paradox: detached observation and intimate collapse, dream and catastrophe intertwined. Like the image, the music never clarifies whether the destruction it depicts is external or internal.
Ultimately, Soundtrack to the Daily Agenda is more than a post-industrial statement; it’s an exploration of endurance. Shiferson translates the invisible weight of routine into a visceral sonic language where post-punk grit, techno precision, and ambient melancholy coexist. The result feels both personal and universal — a soundtrack for anyone who has felt the strain of keeping it together, one day after another.
With this release, Ship Her Son affirms his place at the forefront of Ukraine’s experimental scene, channeling turmoil into form and noise into meaning. It’s a record of rare coherence and emotional gravity — and one we’re proud to feature on our webzine, as a testament to how sound can mirror the fragile rhythms of modern existence.