Audiopile Review: There’s a certain, shall we say, distrust of expertise out there these days. Grumpy skeptics might want to lend their ears to ‘Dew Point Harmonics’, the delightful new album from UK-based producer Luke Sanger. There are plenty of IDM-influenced ambient albums floating around, but Sanger’s expertise really elevates this one. First, he knows how to write a great tune. Second, rather than relying on the same pre-sets and plugins as everyone else, he digs deep into complex modular patching and software customization. Third, Sanger’s expertise gives him the confidence to take risks and push the envelope. So, ‘Solid Steps’ immediately surpasses every woozy post-Boards of Canada track you’ve heard this year. And then he goes straight into the glitchy electro-acoustic weirdness of ‘Poppers’. A little later in the album, ‘Natural Light’ offers a seamless synthesis of new age loveliness and extra-terrestrial noise making. Trust us, it takes a real expert to make electronic music this daring sound so effortlessly accessible.

Balmat began our journey in 2021 with the release of Luke Sanger’s Languid Gongue. Now, three years later, we turn an important corner as the Norfolk musician rejoins us with Dew Point Harmonics, the first repeat appearance on the label. Sanger’s new album feels like a natural extension of his inaugural record for Balmat: It’s a bewitching collection of esoteric synth sketches that slips unpredictably between consonant repetition, poignant melodies, and gnarled bursts of noise that catch in the ear like burrs in hiking socks.

That natural metaphor is perhaps not accidental. Despite having been composed on Sanger’s diverse array of hardware and self-written software, many of the tracks were first conceived while Sanger was hiking in a particularly wild and isolated section of the Norfolk coast. The field recording that opens the album, on “6am Beach Walk,” was taken on one of his many early-morning walks there, in which he and his dog might go for miles without seeing another soul. The album’s title was inspired by the overnight condensation covering the long marram grass in the dunes, glistening in the early light (and drenching everything coming in contact with it) before evaporating in the morning sun. Indeed, the concept of dew point—the temperature at which water vapor condenses into a liquid—feels like the perfect metaphor for Sanger’s music, in which foggy ambience is distilled into glistening quicksilver orbs, transient spheres of perfection eventually absorbed back into the atmosphere.

A shapeshifting collection of richly detailed and deeply expressive electronic miniatures, Dew Point Harmonics is both a testament to the mysteries of transformation and an invitation to get lost in the wilderness of your own imagination.