Revered producer and composer Daniel Avery today drops his most ambitious and accomplished studio album to date, Ultra Truth. The project showcases contributions from HAAi, Cherelle, AK Paul, Kelly Lee Owens, James Messiah and Jonnine Standish (HTRK).
Spanning fifteen immaculate tracks, the album sees Avery going back to many of the things that had inspired him to first make music as a teenager – pensive, emotive records by Deftones, Portishead, Nick Cave or Mogwai, the exquisite darkness of David Lynch’s movies and – on tracks like Devotion and Higher – the thunderous energy of leftfield rave music.
Inhabiting its own world of sound, a construct built in Avery’s Thames side studio with collaborative help from a host of friends: the production touch of Ghost Culture and Manni Dee, the vocals of HAAi, Jonnine Standish (HTRK), AK Paul and the voices of Marie Davidson, Kelly Lee Owens, Sherelle and James Massiah.
Speaking on his new project, Avery states: “Ultra Truth finds me in a different place to where I’ve been before. My previous albums have all focused on the idea of music being an escape or a distraction from the world but that’s not the case this time. For me this album is about looking directly into the darkness, not running away from it.”
“There’s a way through these times but it involves keeping the important people in your life close to you and navigating the noise together. This is an intentionally heavy and dense album, the hooks often hidden in dusty corners. I’m no longer dealing in a misty-eyed euphoria. Ultra Truth is a distorted fever dream of a record: riled, determined and alive.”
Elsewhere, a counterpoint to Ultra Truth’s juggernaut breakbeats comes in the form of Avery’s elegiac tribute to the late Andrew Weatherall.
“Andrew was an enormously important figure in my life. It’s been said about him so many times, but Andrew was someone who did things entirely on his own terms, an outsider through and through. He was a punk rocker as much as he was a techno DJ.”
Listen to the album here.
