LP2 surfaces as memory: already in motion, already altered by time. It emerges from conditions set long before its contours became audible, shaped by residue and intention held in suspension. Vocalist Theo Bleckmann and electronic musician and producer Joseph Branciforte return to a shared language first articulated on 2019’s LP1, though “return” feels imprecise. What unfolds resembles a sustained act of listening.

The album opens in a state of half-awareness. Sound drifts forward without a fixed point of origin, part breath, part circuitry, voice and machine dissolving into one another before any roles can be assigned. Nothing announces itself. Instead, the ear is gently reoriented, adjusting to a space where boundaries have softened and distinctions lose urgency. Understanding gathers slowly, arriving through familiarity, through the sensation of being inside something that has been waiting.

This threshold was never intended. The opening fragment began as a technical aside, a moment caught incidentally and set aside. Heard on its own, it revealed an unexpected gravity. What might have been dismissed instead became a doorway that refused to close. Folding it back into earlier work no longer felt possible. From that insistence, LP2 quietly took form, bound to its predecessor through consequence.

Years removed from its initial capture, the album reads as an extended aftereffect. Its modest length disguises the precision of its attention. The exchange between Bleckmann’s mercurial voice and Branciforte’s powered architectures has grown increasingly permeable, unconcerned with hierarchy or authorship. Sound operates as shared terrain, a meeting place for intention, accident, and recollection.

Where LP1 favored immediacy, time is now allowed to fold inward. Improvisation remains central, guided by images, instructions, and gestures that never fully declare themselves. Layers are revisited and subtly reconfigured. At moments, structure briefly surfaces, a harmony aligning, a texture clarifying, before dissolving back into motion. What persists is the sensation of listening under pressure, of sound shaped by forces it cannot articulate.

Several longer works act as gravitational centers. In the opening piece, “1.13,” the voice strains toward release but remains suspended within a luminous enclosure. Light translates itself into sound, illuminating an abyss shaped by collective longing. Movement is tentative, nearly imperceptible, as if forward motion itself has grown uncertain. Falsetto phrases assert presence with quiet insistence, only to be repeatedly subsumed. The calm suggested on the surface carries an undercurrent of warning, a reminder that serenity and menace often coexist.

“11.15” unfolds as a contemplative space. Its pulse and interwoven voices, punctuated by gong-like resonances, suggest ritual, encouraging attention over destination. “7.21” permits deeper aporias. Here, Bleckmann elicits more palpable gestures, a vulnerability that feels unguarded and exposed. That tactility continues into “9.23,” where hymn-like passages orbit their own unraveling. The voice moves between grit and elevation, traversing emotional thresholds in compressed succession. Glockenspiel tones glimmer at the margins, offering fleeting points of orientation, reminders of impermanence.

Threaded throughout these pillars are shorter interludes that function as glitchy nervous tissue. They interrupt continuity, splintering the listening experience into moments of raw recall. These fragments feel unearthed, surfacing abruptly and vanishing just as quickly. Each prevents comfort from settling too fully. Among them, “10.17.13” leaves the most haunting imprint. Its click-driven pulse and premature dissipation suggest erosion in real time, the sound of something slipping beyond reach.

For all its beauty and atmosphere, LP2 carries a persistent shadow. It does not attempt to diagnose. Space is left open for reflection, trusting the listener to bring their own histories into the exchange. The album offers no tools, no instructions. It sings quietly toward the places where repair might begin, leaving discovery in our hands. What is reclaimed in this way carries a different weight. Recognition arrives slowly, shaped by attention, and whatever healing emerges feels earned, never bestowed.