Stolen Velour, FLOCO & Aria SL - Underlight Stolen Velour, FLOCO & Aria SL

Instead of leaning into the nihilism that often defines conversations around the virtual and material, Stolen Velour, FLOCO and Aria SL’s album Underlight explores a harmonious and tentatively optimistic dynamic between the two worlds and builds upon their original work together, Holdfast. Released via Bristol label Illegal Data, the LP is a careful negotiation between live performance and club functionality. Combining influences that range from classical to electronic music, the trio’s writing weighs the heaviest on nomadic interactions with technology in physical spaces.

The seven-track LP took shape over the course of four years, as the artists moved between London and Leeds to write, record and rehearse a body of music that eventually formed the contents of Underlight. Raised across the UK; with Stolen Velour in Leeds, FLOCO in Devon and Aria SL in Kent, the trio eventually came together as musicians in a house share in South East London, when Stolen Velour heard Aria SL singing Handel’s ‘Endless pleasure’ through the wall. Paired with FLOCO’s distinctly amorphous yet refined violin playing and Stolen Velour’s formidable club discography, they’ve been involved in each other’s music in one way or another ever since, putting down roots at venues like The Bath House in Hackney Wick via the Niche studio residencies.

After debuting their hardware-driven live show last year at venues like The White Hotel, Headrow House and Club Cheek, supporting the likes of aya, Jabu and Mun Sing, a series of shows across Europe inspired a different approach to their once analogue writing framework. They began to toy with the interplay between violin, kalimba, voice, pedals and in the box production. Inverting their original writing processes, Underlight transforms the sounds explored on their first record to give more space to party utility alongside experimental songwriting.

Lead single ‘Caught Myself’ exemplifies this club-first approach; intertwined with the sophisticated sound design, FLOCO’s distorted violin part assumes a primary percussive role that serves to ground Aria SL’s pensive vocal hook and the rising string melodies. ‘Feels Like Forever’ highlights the delicate interplay between FLOCO and Aria SL’s vocals, pairing soaring operatic lines with introspective songwriting. On interlude ‘Cutscene,’ the production envelops a candid conversation between the trio, recounting caramel cookies and backaches captured between rehearsal takes. Tracks ‘Moment,’ ‘i want,’ and ‘LOCH’ transmute source material from Holdfast, transforming it into euphoric club-ready textures, with nods to African genres like amapiano and gqom in ‘i want’ in particular.

The LP closes with a live recording of ‘Lilium,’ featuring harp, piano, violin, and tenor and soprano vocals, an intentional experiment in reproducing the earliest tape recordings of classical music in contemporary contexts. This final track brings the artists’ releases full circle, retelling the story of their first track together through an acoustic lens. The delicacy with which the three artists toy with blurred methods of songwriting feel stronger than ever on their first full length release.