Helicon x Al Lover – Arise

Description

Glasgow’s Helicon and Los Angeles-based producer and DJ Al Lover have joined forces on a bold new collaborative album, ‘Arise’, due for release February 13th 2026 on Fuzz Club. “Arise confronts a culture of individualism at the mercy of opportunistic grifters,” says frontman John-Paul Hughes, “offering a reminder that empathy, compassion, and authenticity are still choices.” Reflecting that tension, Helicon and Al Lover deliver a maximalist, uplifting sound with a baggy, hypnotic pulse — fusing Helicon’s trademark psychedelia with Al Lover’s genre-bending electronics.

Produced by Tony Doogan (Mogwai, The Jesus & Mary Chain) at Castle Of Doom Studios in Glasgow, the result is a dense, hypnotic, and fiercely rhythmic record that layers trip-hop breaks, deep low-end and dub textures into “a visceral wake-up call to rise above the bullshit and reclaim meaning from the madness.” The record’s alchemical creative approach was built initially on a trans-Atlantic online back-and-forth of demos between Helicon and Lover. Once upwards of 20 demos had been bounced across the ether and eventually whittled down, the Helicon band (clocking in at eight members at the time of writing, with Belle & Sebastian’s Chris Geddes also playing piano on ‘Goodbye Cool World’) headed into Castle Of Doom to lay down the bare-bones, ready for Lover to fly over and join them and work his magic on drum machine, synth and samplers.

“For me, psychedelia is about breaking things open and seeing where it can go next”, John-Paul says: “How far can it stretch and still feel vital? Working with Al Lover let us twist it into something new and prove it can still evolve, still surprise, and still mean something in a world of conformity where everything begins to look and sound the same.” With Lover adding: “The process of working with Helicon on this project has been nothing but a joy. It’s so nice to have music be the conduit for human connection. This is an ongoing theme with any creative endeavour that I’ve undertaken. I hope that connectivity reaches through the music to the listener, helping them feel like a participant in the music, not just passive observers.”

Tracklist:

1. Arise
2. Backbreaker
3. Tabula Rasa
4. Not A Thought
5. It Won’t Stop
6. Adjust The Dosage
7. We Don’t Belong
8. Midnight Mass
9. Goodbye Cool World