A busted mid-century TV set hums alive, its channels bleeding into a universe only Zeds Dead can tune.
Their long-awaited sophomore album, Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness, bridges yesterday’s voices to tomorrow’s beats. Eight years in the making, it’s out now via the influential electronic music duo’s own record label, Deadbeats.
The album’s conceptual framework—a television flickering through time—perfectly suits Zeds Dead’s sampling prowess and lets their obsession with crate-digging evolve into a widescreen narrative. What makes it exceptional isn’t merely its technical brilliance, but how it transforms disparate cultural fragments into something of a sonic Tarantino film with dusty samples, sharp cuts and endless style.
Sampling becomes sorcery in the hands of these restless dubstep pioneers. “Bad Guy” stands tall among the tracklist, interpolating Al Pacino’s iconic lines from Scarface in a menacing electroclash track with vintage breakbeats. Other highlights include “A Million Dreams,” where legendary jazz pianist Duke Ellington’s gravelly musings from a 1960s interview float through liquid drum & bass; and “Angel,” which channels the raw French electro of Justice.
For the diehards, Zeds Dead revisit their roots in “Hold My Hand,” delivering a gut-punch of nostalgia through haunting vocals dripping over bass so thick it could coat lungs. “One of These Mornings” follows suit, threading the soul-stirring voice of R&B icon Patti LaBelle through a stunning dubstep track that thrums with both reverence and grit. These tracks anchor Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness, tethering its wilder experiments to the duo’s foundational sound.
The origin of the album’s curious title is a cosmic coincidence, a half-remembered dream Zeds Dead tweeted back in 2017 and recently rediscovered by a fan. According to a press release, “Return” signifies the revival of their early sound while the “Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness” refers to the radio waves and light of the electromagnetic spectrum, a metaphor for the unseen threads binding the duo’s influences to their production.
“In making Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness, we really connected with the spirit of what Zeds Dead is. Throwing whatever crossed our minds at the wall and seeing what stuck,” Zeds Dead said in a statement. “One of our biggest inspirations for this album was the idea of not letting anything matter in our creative process except for our own taste. It is very much art for art’s sake, and the product is something we can both fully stand behind.”
The release of Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness coincides with the launch of an eponymous North American tour, which will feature “a one-of-a-kind visual component,” per the press release.
You can find the new album on streaming platforms here.
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