As Aesop Rock’s maintained a steadily productive career past the quarter-century mark, it’s become clear that the disorientingly intricate and referentially recursive lyrics he became revered for were just a part of what made his work fascinating. What really makes it go is his sense of observation, both a self-interrogating and memory-plundering lattice of introspective experiences and an outward-facing look at a world that keeps alienating him because it seems to prevent so many other people from achieving that same recognition. Integrated Tech Solutions skirts a theme of scientific overreach and computerized advancement-as-destruction; “Mindful Solutionism” kicks off with a classic Run-D.M.C. gag reference en route to trying to interrogate that problem out like a condensed Adam Curtis take on The Ascent of Man. And as “All City Nerve Map” emphasizes, he’s more interested in a world where that endless growth can’t smother us — a nomadic, aging-Xer update of the ’60s countercultural dropout ethos that’s all about figuring out how to stay in tune while keeping just outside an ever-expanding grid (“Cramp into the glamper van, vanish off the candid cam”). But that theme’s presence on the album feels more like examining the effects than the causes, and most of the record tends to focus on the reflective mixture of past memories and present-day worries in a way that sees the modern day wanting in comparison because the only progress we seem to have made in the intervening years was technological instead of social. And it’s a situation that’s robbed us of everything from the ability to sink into personally fulfilling and meditative hobbies without being compelled to worry about productivity (i.e. how “Pigeonometry” tracks a downturn of artistic inspiration) to the basic humanity that keeps people in distress from falling apart completely. The harrowing “Aggressive Steven” is one of the best storytelling raps ever written about the prospect of having your life upended by someone who’s struggling, only to find the most heated source of anger in the fact that nobody seems to be helping this person. Even the neighborhood snapshot of billy woods collab “Living Curfew” treads the line that leads from observant perceptiveness to wary agoraphobia, like Black Star’s “Respiration” feeling short of breath. There are glimpses into a happier past — the mystery and wonder of a childhood Aes encountering Mr. T as a living person and not just a TV character (“100 Feet Tall”), or the familial comforts of time spent with his Lithuanian grandmother (“Vititus”). And they serve as an emotional contrast to a present day marked with having to work hard to find novelty where you still can, whether it’s in something as eternal as river life (“By the River”) or as guilty-pleasure prosaic as a fast food order (“Time Moves Differently Here,” which features one of his most dizzying couplets ever: “Zesty melted melon cheddar chocolate blizzard schnitzel bowls/Lemon butter buffalo conniption guava brisket cones”). His flow’s still as sharp as it is elastic, a Silly Putty boxcutter that lends dynamic life to some of his most dense and dour beats yet. That’s no knock on his production, either; even when it feels enervated there’s a grippingly tense, ankle-weighted gravity that keeps the slow-dread proceedings moving like hip-hop’s answer to sludge metal.