For as many different directions as Daniel Avery’s latest collection of songs travels in—ranging from ambient and atmospheric drum and bass to upbeat trip-hop and jungle—the hour-long record consistently feels like it’s operating under cover of night. Ultra Truth, Avery’s darkly dense follow up to last June’s more spaced-out Together in Static, pulls from the imagery of the mid-’90s tech-noir film canon as much as it does the long cast of influences he’s sharing with us today—many of whom helped soundtrack that movement.
In the playlist he created for us, Avery includes the dark shadings of Nine Inch Nails, Portishead, and Smashing Pumpkins—“Eye,” from the industrial Lost Highway soundtrack, to be exact—with more contemplatively ambient works by the likes of late-period Low and the soothing sounds of the recent Ela Minus/DJ Python collaboration. “Ultra Truth took me back to the warm, silent shadows of my youth,” Avery explains of the new record. “An analogue vision of a digital future. Faith in strangers, strength in numbers, a connection through togetherness. Some of these songs shaped the record, some are simply things holding me together as I write this today. They are all full of love.”
Check out the playlist below, and stream Ultra Truth here.
