Ross Harper releases striking LP 'The Dark Album'

Ross Harper has released his hypnotic techno record, 'The Dark Album'.

Released on October 31, it was dubbed 'the perfect album for Halloween and beyond' which demonstrates the producer and DJ's capabilities in the darker realm of sound, influenced by the psychedelic hippie era of the 1960s and 70s.

Between 2012 and 2019 Harper took time away from listening to other folks' music to solely focus on developing his own sound, and it was in this time where the tracks found on this album were curated, a period which he dubs "isolated years of introspection".

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“I am rooted in the techno scene of London in the mid to late 90s. During these formative years I met a guy at an after party in Brixton. He told me he grew up in the jungle and the animals taught him how to do miracles. One morning at an after party, I saw him leap 7 feet in the air from standing, in that moment I was no longer in the kitchen of my mate’s house, but I found myself in a desert. In the middle distance I saw a group of cloaked figures performing a sacrificial ceremony against a curved stone. It was too much for my conscious mind and I brought myself back to the kitchen.

"Then followed 20 years of deep introspection, I went from an extravagant extroverted teenager to introvert obsessed with spirituality and electronic music. In 2019 I flipped again, that was my third awakening, now I am an extroverted introvert. The tracks in The Dark Album were all produced during the isolated years of introspection.”

“Hard Patience really encapsulates the energy of the album," Harper continues on tracks he enjoys most on the record. "I love the complexity and depth, the multiple voices across many, many sonic layers: it's like a musical conversation that is both powerful yet calming, full of direction and yet firmly grounded.”

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“I love Humanistic Correction. This track means so much to me on a personal level. Our society has become so binary, everything has to have a box and be black and white. But real life simply isn’t like that, compassion is required for life to really work, and that compassionate energy is what I have weaved into Humanistic Correction. Compassion is a theme that I come back to again and again in my creative work."

You can check out 'The Dark Album' from Ross Harper here.

Niamh Ingram is Mixmag's Weekend Editor, follow her on Twitter