West London-based duo Kessoncoda—the collaboration of drummer Tom Sunney and keyboardist Fil Sowa—will release their debut album on Matthew Halsall’s Gondwana Records.

It has taken upwards of 12 years for the pair to hone Outerstate. We’re told that it stands “firm” between “acoustic tradition and electronica,” while taking influence from rock, ambient, breakbeat, and soundtracks for film, and artists such as Squarepusher, Radiohead, and Clark.

Like former and present Gondwana Records label mates such as GoGo Penguin and Portico Quartet, there’s something “strongly cinematic” about Kessoncoda and their debut album.

There’s also a deliberate undercurrent of post-pandemic unease which is encapsulated in the title.

“This feeling of being within a group of friends, and you’re chatting, and you’re physically there but mentally you’re not at all,” the pair says. “You’re somewhere else, a really weird state of being.”

Lifted from the record, “Greyscale,” the latest single, is the first song that came to fruition after all those years of joint experimentation.

“That was definitely the ‘a-ha moment’,” says Fil, “where my piano playing was everything I wanted it to be, a style I’d been trying to figure out, and Tom’s drums were just underpinning it perfectly.”

Tracklisting

01. The Sum Of All The Parts
02. Greyscale
03. KTO
04. Hammers
05. Talk To Me I’m Sleeping
06. Spaceliminal
07. Dreambend
08. X is closer to A
09. Reverie
10. Amaya

Outerstate LP is scheduled for July 12 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Greyscale” and “X is closer to A” via the player below and pre-order here.