Helicon x Al Lover – Backbreaker
Glasgow psych-rock band Helicon and Los Angeles producer/DJ Al Lover drop “Backbreaker”, the second single from their collaborative album “Arise”, out February 13, 2026 on Fuzz Club Records. The track fuses Helicon’s dense fuzz guitar and sitar-heavy psychedelia with Al Lover’s dubby grooves and hip-hop beatmaking into something unexpected.
“Backbreaker came from a desire to fuse sounds we’d never really heard living side by side,” says Helicon frontman John-Paul Hughes. Middle Eastern guitars pair with a melodic bassline sitting between Motown and indie rock, while eastern strings and percussion rub against sub-basses and breakbeats. The production layers everything into a maximalist sound with a baggy, hypnotic pulse—something you can listen to thirty times and still find new melodies hidden in the mix.
Al Lover grew up going to drum and bass parties, and he brings that influence to the track. “Blending that world with rock has been done before, but not quite in the way we approached ‘Backbreaker’,” he says. “The aggression and intensity of both genres fit naturally together, and the psychedelic edge that emerges when they collide feels like its own new space.”
Lyrically, Helicon’s Declan Welsh describes it as a simple poem about love as a pleasant pain—”a privilege all the same to feel it when I hear your name.” A mantra for when you’re in the midst of hopeless affection.
The album was built on a trans-Atlantic back-and-forth of demos. After whittling down over 20 sketches, Helicon (currently an eight-member rotating collective including Belle & Sebastian’s Chris Geddes on piano) recorded the bare-bones at Castle Of Doom Studios in Glasgow with producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, The Jesus & Mary Chain). Then Al Lover flew over to work his magic on drum machine, synth, and samplers.
“For me, psychedelia is about breaking things open and seeing where it can go next,” Hughes says. “Working with Al Lover let us twist it into something new and prove it can still evolve, still surprise.”
Tour Dates
Europe:
- February 7, 2026 – The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, UK
- February 26, 2026 – Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield, UK
- February 27, 2026 – The Deaf Institute, Manchester, UK
- April 25, 2026 – Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, UK
