Sorrdes is a producer from Ipswich, UK. He started releasing music about ten years ago, first under the name Deadpoole before switching over to Sorrdes in when he released The Mountain Upholds the Sky EP in 2017. Outside of a few scattered singles, it has been four years since Sorrdes’s last proper release, Moon Kissed – EP. Now he’s back with a brand new full-length album, Looking to the Sky for Grounding.

If you’re going to take some time between releases, people might begin to expect a grander statement when you come back, but Sorrdes doesn’t have to worry about that. That’s because Looking to the Sky for Grounding is a bold instrumental album that sees him exploring the world of dance music in a way that he hasn’t on previous projects, and it makes a bigger statement than fans might have expected. There are still moments for some beautiful downtempo hip hop numbers, such as the space rock-influenced “Home Alone,” which will beautifully dance around your head as these sonic layers swirl in the air over a laid back beat. However, where the album becomes really special is the way in which Sorrdes cleverly and seamlessly transitions out of that song into the house rhythms of “Love is a Mirror,” which will gently shake you out of your daydream and get your feet moving onto the dance floor. Throughout the album, Sorrdes is mixing in house, jungle, drum and bass, and more experimental forms of electronic music alongside his home base of instrumental hip hop. The key here is that Sorrdes clearly put in the work to understand how to compose these other forms of music, and his love seems very genuine when it comes to all of these different subgenres. It doesn’t feel like he’s just dabbling or experimenting. He’s not just dipping his toe in the waters, he’s learned to swim, he’s diving in, and he’s swimming laps. As a result, you can feel the joy with each track as Sorrdes kicks into different rhythmic patterns, drum sounds, and melodic elements, and you can hear where he’s getting a kick out of finding the through lines between these genres and subgenres and putting it all into conversation on one album.

Sometimes when an artist is about ten years into their career, they’ll lock into a certain style and convince themselves that this is what they do and this is what people want. That can be fine, but when an artist like Sorrdes can go and reinvent their sound and inject all this new life into their music while still acknowledging their roots and putting everything together into one album that is not only coherent, but exciting and enjoyable? Then you get something special like Looking to the Sky for Grounding.