Alchemy

Disclosure’s <i>Alchemy</i> marks a double milestone. Not only does the Lawrence brothers’ fourth album arrive shortly after the 10th anniversary of their debut <i>Settle</i>, it also represents the UK duo’s first album with no features and no samples. That might seem like a major shift for an act that has offered a dance-pop platform to voices like Sam Smith, Lorde and Miguel while mining classic R&B and 2-step garage for creative inspiration. But <i>Alchemy</i> proves Disclosure more than capable of holding their own as singers and songwriters at the same time that it takes them back to their roots in body-moving dance music. Newly liberated from their previous label contract, Disclosure began writing the album in 2022 after wrapping their <i>ENERGY</i> tour, and a distinct air of freedom permeates the record’s slippery rhythms and effervescent chords. They worked separately, with Guy newly married and living in Los Angeles and Howard nursing a break-up back in London—an experience of heartbreak that helps account for a pervading air of melancholy in songs like “Looking for Love” and “We Were in Love”, even while the grooves are as buoyant as anything in Disclosure’s career to date. Back in the early 2010s, Disclosure helped kick off the revival of UK garage—a fast-moving genre of underground dance that had taken the British charts by storm a decade earlier—and on <i>Alchemy</i>, they find fresh inspiration in its slinky, syncopated drum programming. But there’s nothing retro about these songs, which cast a wide stylistic net. “Looking for Love” opens the album with flickering drums and some of the most colourful chord changes in their entire discography, and “Simply Won’t Do” continues the giddy, uptempo vibe. “Higher Than Ever Before” shifts into chopped-up jungle breaks—a first for Disclosure—while the frictionless glide of “A Little Bit” draws on the uplifting spirit of Y2K-era trance. Topping it all off are some of the sharpest hooks they’ve ever written, the brothers’ voices running through a shimmering scrim of vocoder and other effects. Where once they foregrounded their featured guests, here, their voices dissolve back into the music, just one more vivid colour in a dynamic album.