“I wanted this record to be sincere,” Lawrence Hart tells Apple Music. “It’s about the fragility of euphoria, the tinge of melancholy in uplifting moments.” Since the release of his debut EP, Red Lion, in 2021, British producer Hart has made his signature an infectious blend of thumping dance-floor drums, rumbling bass and soaring vocal melodies—a peak-time club sound that treads the line between joy and emotive introspection. With Hart having regularly collaborated with juggernauts of melodic dance music like George FitzGerald and Alan Fitzpatrick, this long-awaited debut album presents the fullest realisation of a poignant and powerful production style that is distinctly his own. From the ambient melodics of “Lotus Bloom” to the thunderous 2-step of “NoMoreLuv4u”, enveloping harmonies of “Still But Still Moving” and classic garage feel of “Hear Ur Heartbeat”, the record’s 12 tracks play out the sound of Hart’s defiant arrival. “This is the summation of everything I’ve been working towards over the past few years,” he says. “It’s a record to bring people together on the dance floor.” Read on for Hart’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. “Lotus Bloom” “I’ve had this instrumental intro for a few years and have always tried to shoehorn it into a lot of different ideas because I love it so much but it’s never quite worked. When it came to making the album, I realised it should just stand alone as a bit of drama to kick off the record, since I love albums like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis or anything by King Crimson—they’re all prog albums that have so much melodrama and narrative to them too!” “NoMoreLuv4u” “These chords were written sometime during the COVID lockdowns, and I couldn’t find a tune to fit them into until I came across this sample by a great Australian R&B singer called TANISHA. When I heard her vocal line, it chopped perfectly to make the hook alongside the chords and stood out straight away as a single. I probably did the least work on this track out of the entire record and it subsequently has a directness to it that really connects to audiences whenever I play it.” “Closer to You” “‘Closer to You’ is the second track I wrote for the record at the end of 2022, when I was putting up lots of 16- or 32-bar ideas on Instagram and getting people’s reactions. Everyone reacted well to this one, and then I found an amazing ’90s R&B cover of Anita Baker’s ‘Sweet Love’ that fit beautifully to round it off with an a cappella feel. It ended up producing the sound for the whole album to come.” “Out of the Rain” “I went on a deep dive into YouTube playlists of unreleased R&B projects from the late ’90s and early 2000s while I was writing the album and came across this really fun sample. I love finding things that are really obscure and giving them some life through a sample. We ended up using my friend Sashi Wild’s own lyrics and vocals over that sampled melody, and then I combined it with the Burial feel of the backing to produce the final track.” “Just Belong” “I had written the track ‘Trust’ a few months before this with Giulia Tess and loved the trance-y synth sound we found for that on the Moog. I felt like I could live in that sound for another track, so I started writing chords and playing around with these Special Request samples to ground it. It’s another one that touches on the prog influence because it has so many layered sections to it!” “Still But Still Moving” “I wanted to take every opportunity I could to have as many ambient moments as possible on the album. The next track, ‘Love U Bring’, starts with just a vocal pad so I wanted to make a palate cleanser before that with this drone playing a melody over piano chords. It’s something to start the second half of the record, like DJing, where every fourth or fifth track you bring the energy down before you bring it up again.” “Love U Bring” “This track is all about a wild ‘rug pull’ moment that comes halfway through. You’re listening to the chopped vocal sample I found from a 1999 album by this American R&B singer called Coko and then it’s sequenced over a simple bassline that suddenly transitions into a crazy ending that takes the listener to another place entirely. I love the feeling of the switch-up.” “Hear Ur Heartbeat” “I love to find a little line from a verse that I can then chop and pitch to create a chorus hook. That’s what happened with this ‘hear your heartbeat’ phrase from a beautiful record called ‘7am’ by Shivum Sharma that I instantly knew I had to make a song with. It came together quickly but the mixing of it was very long because I wanted to create an overwhelming sense of euphoria in the chorus without giving the listener anxiety from playing too much melody all at once. It’s all about balance.” “The Wind Cry” “In my studio, I have this granular sampler that has a condenser mic on the front that can pick up anything I’m playing in the room. I played the end of ‘Hear Ur Heartbeat’ into it and the sounds of ‘The Wind Cry’ are those chords decaying before being plugged into an ambient pedal to build the piece. All the ambient pieces on the album aren’t over-polished, since I want to let them be what they are.” “Fucking Mega” “This is the only track on the album that was initially an older demo. It has a certain sincerity to it because of the sample of this guy talking about his clubbing heyday, which came from a mate of mine recording a 20-minute convo he had with a stranger on the street about dance music. I wasn’t considering putting it on the record but it was one that everyone loved, which took me by surprise. It feels like a more challenging listen but I guess it’s all the more rewarding for that.” “Daydreamers” “I was feeling a bit creatively drained when it came to writing this track since I had already finished most of the album and my brain was in a mixing and finishing mode. I came across this folder of ideas from a few years before that I’d completely forgotten about, and ‘Daydreamers’ was a track I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done anything with. It felt perfect to finish off the record with but had no vocals on it so I ended up adding these lines constructed entirely of runs that singers do between lyrics.” “The Wave Cry” “I was listening to Keith Jarrett’s solo piano concerts a lot when writing this, and so I went to my piano and played some diatonic chords that I then put through the granular sampler and took off the metronome beat. The whole record is so beat-oriented it’s nice to have this moment where time breaks down to close. It’s also bringing back the chords from ‘Still But Still Moving’ in a new key to create a full-circle moment as we end.”