2K88, Duffus, Miller & Scout Release Murky Album

The album "Everything Always Changes, for We’re Truly Here" was released by the quartet 2K88, Lauren Duffus, Rainy Miller, and Bianca Scout. This collaboration originated from a residency in Gdynia, Poland, following an invitation from the Unsound festival. Polish producer 2K88, known for his dark, glitching tracks influenced by Polish rap and UK bass music, teamed up with the British musicians Duffus, Miller, and Scout, who create genre-agnostic sounds. The residency in Gdynia last year preceded a live performance at the Unsound festival in Kraków, with the resulting material forming the basis of the 10-track album.

The record features a haunting and vaporous sound, characterized by glacial sound design, fragmented vocal effects, and prominent low-end frequencies. The opening track, "Everything Always Changes," establishes the album's atmospheric tone with textural drones and Duffus's ethereal, looped vocals. Miller's spoken word contributions add a sense of elegiac grandeur to the ambient soundscapes, a mood further enhanced by soaring synthesizers on tracks like "In Stardust Garden … (Empress Ballroom)" and "Purple Mauve."

While the album successfully conjures an atmosphere of glacial sound design and elegiac grandeur, it occasionally leans into excessive moodiness. The collaboration highlights the distinct yet complementary styles of the artists involved, blending 2K88's electronic production with the vocal and spoken-word elements from Duffus, Miller, and Scout. The resulting sound is described as murky and best suited for late-night listening, reflecting the artists' individual sonic palettes.