Not counting last year’s cracking, and comprehensive Lapsus boxset compilation “Where Things Are Hollow: No Tomorrow”, I think this is Pye Corner Audio’s first long-player, and first physical release, since 2022’s essential “Let’s Emerge!” “More Songs About The Sun” sort of picks up where its predecessor left off. That set was a kosmische, kinda ambient journey, building and peaking with the final driving number “Warmth Of The Sun”. It surfed  arpeggios and pulses but was beatless. Here, now, pretty much everything is powered by some sort of propulsive percussive programming.

On the brilliant, Boards Of Canada-esque “Rays Of Sunshine”, these are slow motion crashes, collisions. Even “The Race Is Run”, a sublime, ethereal, shoegaze lullaby, that trades tremolo licks with spinning, spiralling sound effects – recalling The Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, and David Holmes’ psyche, `60s girl group homages – rides gently percolating patterns. The urgent “Cycle”, a big, bright burst of epic psychedelia and the album’s “teaser” single, tears along on tough, funky trap drums. Electronics underpinning great grinding guitar riffs and soaring soloing supplied by Andy Bell. The former Ride axe-man can also be found contributing pedal steel-like details to the frantically fluctuating frequencies and summery motorik swing of “Euphoria”, buzzing feedback / fuzz to “Analogue Dreams” and screaming, shrieking backwards loops to “As We Begin”. 

Other guests include Hannah R, who adds choral harmonies to the chilled, haunting “My Shimmer”, and “Tartan Noir” novelist Ian Rankin, who narrates his prose piece, “The Breath Of Now”. The whole album is awesome, but the latter is an immediate standout, where organ drones,  mournful strings and a breakbeat back Rankin’s dystopian poetry, in a manner resembling Wladimir M’s Eevo Lute classic, “Planet E”. 

Pye Corner Audio’s “More Songs About The Sun” can be ordered directly from Sonic Cathedral.