Helicon x Al Lover – Arise
Glasgow’s Helicon and LA producer/DJ Al Lover announce their collaborative album “Arise”, out February 13th, 2026 on Fuzz Club. The title track arrives now, showing how the two acts fuse Helicon’s psychedelia with Al Lover’s genre-bending electronics.
“Arise confronts a culture of individualism at the mercy of opportunistic grifters,” says Helicon frontman John-Paul Hughes. “Offering a reminder that empathy, compassion, and authenticity are still choices.” The collaboration delivers maximalist, uplifting sound with a baggy, hypnotic pulse—trip-hop breaks, deep low-end, and dub textures layered together.
Tony Doogan produced the album at Castle Of Doom Studios in Glasgow, working with Mogwai and The Jesus & Mary Chain in the past. Helicon and Lover started by trading demos across the Atlantic, eventually narrowing down 20 tracks. Helicon’s eight-piece band (including Belle & Sebastian’s Chris Geddes on piano for “Goodbye Cool World”) laid down bare-bones recordings before Lover flew over to add drum machine, synth, and samplers.
“For me, psychedelia is about breaking things open and seeing where it can go next,” Hughes says. “How far can it stretch and still feel vital? Working with Al Lover let us twist it into something new and prove it can still evolve, still surprise, and still mean something in a world of conformity where everything begins to look and sound the same.”
Lover adds: “It’s so nice to have music be the conduit for human connection. I hope that connectivity reaches through the music to the listener, helping them feel like a participant in the music, not just passive observers.”
Tracklist:
- Arise
- Backbreaker
- Tabula Rasa
- Not A Thought
- It Won’t Stop
- Adjust The Dosage
- We Don’t Belong
- Midnight Mass
- Goodbye Cool World
