Previously known for her project Nero's Day at Disneyland, which critiqued consumer culture through densely constructed breakcore tracks filled with bombastic, almost circus-like melodies, Lauren Bousfield has since worked extensively as a composer, arranger, and sound designer for film, television, and video games. She's also released more personal material under her own name, and Palimpsest, her first full-length for longtime supporters Deathbomb Arc, is her most accomplished work to date, even topping her 2009 cult hit From Rotting Fantasylands. The album's songs incorporate more of her own vocals than her past work, and while it's hard to discern her lyrics, which sound like she's hissing them through clenched teeth while being chased, they poetically illustrate themes of fear, trauma, destruction, and hopelessness in the age of late capitalism. Her beats are even noisier and more fragmented than before, and they're diced with nearly Baroque melodies and sickly sugary pop sensibilities, as well as occasional bass-driven elements that seem informed by various hybrid club sounds. It's completely overloaded and chaotic, filled with corkscrew breakbeats and torrential noise eruptions, but with a cinematic scope and a pop lifeblood coursing through it all. "Clean Strategic Narratives with Relatable Messaging Murder Them Violently Make Their Children Watch" has some of the most hummable melodies and propulsive bass on the entire album, and it nicely concludes with a heavy breakcore drop and disfigured noise squall. "August Reaching" and "Administrative Violence" are a bit closer to Nero's Day's sinister waltzes, but even more aggressive. Most dizzying is "Crawling into a Fireplace Cackling," which begins with glitchy violins and a truly unsteady rhythm before leading up to a climax of ecstatic melodies and smashed-up jungle breaks. It's clear that Bousfield helped set the stage for the post-PC Music style known as hyperpop, and she continues to innovate with the brilliant Palimpsest.