This stunning new disc from London duo Amp comes with a back story that is equal parts long and involved. If you’ve never heard a thing produced by members Richard Amp and Karine Charff, this is a good time to check in. They’ve produced a gorgeous ambient album that harmonizes delicate electronics and vocals. It is one of the year’s best.

For those familiar with their impressive catalogue, Entangled Time continues Amp’s tradition of finely crafted space music.

1. Charff arrived in London from her Montpellier home in 1991. She met Richard F. Walker (a.k.a. Richard Amp) in 1994, two years after he’d launched the Amp project.
2. There are only one or two degrees of separation between the duo and much of Europe’s avant-garde music scene. A short list of collaborators includes David Pearce (Flying Saucer Attack), Ray Dickaty (Moonshake, Spiritualized), Matt Elliott (Flying Saucer Attack, The Third Eye Foundation), Matt Jones (Crescent), Guy Cooper (The Secret Garden), Gareth Mitchell (The Secret Garden), Robert Hampson (Loop, Main) and Donald Ross Skinner (Julian Cope, Baba Looey).
3. While more than a few prominent artists were turning onto The Ramones and Sex Pistols, Amp says his journey began with a BBC sound effects record in 1977.
4. From Amp’s manifesto: “Randomness and Serendipity had always played an important part in the work of Amp, it is by the use of aleatoric processes that music and sound can breathe together and become alive. … An Amp tune is never fixed in stone, it is an expression of a ‘Now,’ a point in the time and space continuum. There is always improvisation involved and thereby freedom created. … Live, Amp never repeats itself, all the concerts are unique events, all happenings during performance, mistakes and events, have validity. Every performance of a song or tune is a fresh version of that tune.”

That synthesis of music and sound explains this new album’s title. Entangled time is a physics term that refers to the correlation between photons. That doesn’t come close to doing the concept justice. Check out this suitably titled paper for a deeper dive: You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time by Elise Crull, assistant professor in history and philosophy of science at the City College of New York.

Entangled Time lands Nov. 23.

Kevin Press