What So Not – the stage name of enigmatic DJ and electronic producer Chris Emerson – confirms his second studio album, 'Anomaly', is the evolution of everything he's been doing since the release of its predecessor, his 2018 debut 'Not All The Beautiful Things'.
"There's bolder statements – no drops, so to speak, then straight into instrumentals – rather than a big pop song," Chris says."I definitely spent the last three years exploring sounds again."
The first demo stages of 'Anomaly' transpired in 2019, when Chris was travelling the world "for fun", playing a few intermittent shows. "I was playing a camping festival," Chris begins of the album's origins.
"Instead of jumping in and out, I was actually hanging there all weekend, going and watching different acts on different stages.
"I guess [I was getting] back to the ground level of what matters in dance culture, and how it feels to be out there. I always fight against being pushed in certain directions and try to really feel what's meant to happen.
"And then I realise, like, wow, I've lost what this is about to some degree and being here in these moments, out here on the ground in the audience, I get it again. It felt like reconnecting with how I got here in the first place."
Chris doesn't necessarily feel like he "lost" his sense of what dance music is and means, rather, he wasn't as "on it" as he would have liked to have been.
"But that's fine, you know, I was exploring different spaces and energies. But the last album was very sad, I was in a sad place, and I was capturing that – this album is about living, being excited, confident.
"It's a whole different ball game. For me, going out for those experiences and being on ground level again, I felt that energy."
Chris has taken a moment to reflect on what he's said, really unpicking both his experiences and the music he's about to put out.
"Things change over time," he says carefully, "and if you keep doing the same things, you're gonna be left behind. It's always important to reconnect and be like 'What's actually going on down here?'.
"Rather than getting lost in your 200 shows a year, running around the world and just seeing the wall of a hotel. Just being isolated from everything. I was very lucky to get that time in 2019 to reconnect – then I got time to sit and consider it all."
From there, Chris spent seven months in a studio at night working until 3am, an opportunity he'd never had previously in his career to sit in a well-made, well-treated room, for 12 hours daily for months to understand his sound.
"I went to school again," he says. "I was honing my craft from an angle I hadn't had the opportunity to because my career had exploded and sent me everywhere, I never had the time to sit as I was."
That consideration is going to be evident within the album on tracks like 'Halifax' that's bound to be a fan favourite and the album's standout. Excited about that track in particular, Chris says: "That's one of those ones that a few people around me are like 'Oh, I don't know about this,' and I'm like, 'No. This is now.'"
Coated with grooves and trademark What So Not shimmer is another highlight of 'Anomaly', 'Mercy (2022 Edit)' that bubbles with infectious melodics, euphoric instrumentation and increasingly stomping beats as it builds towards a torrid drop.
With plenty of exotic charm and scintillating production, the journey for 'Mercy (2022 Edit)' to find its way onto 'Anomaly' itself stems back to a fortuitous trip to Central America, some experimentation and a touch of sonic cross-pollination.
"'Mercy' was a song that I made with a bunch of my friends on my first-ever trip to Nicaragua, which is almost where I bought my first house and where I spent a lot of time over the last few years," shares Chris.
"It was a song written with JRM and a couple of other friends; JRM, of course, is also on 'On Air' with Louis The Child and Captain Cuts. And MØ heard the record in its early form and loved it so much that she wanted to be a part of it, and wanted to release a version of it and work on it with us.
"And that version, of course, was on her album, this beautiful, stripped-back ballad with Two Feet as well. And I always had in the bag this hyper-excited, pushed and sonically developed What So Not-style version of it.
"I'm pretty ecstatic to have that on this album, and to have MØ on this album, and everybody else involved in this record. And to finally have this version that I can play at shows that fits so well in line with my DJ sets.
"It's a song where I really had time to step away from it, rethink it, strip it back. . . and then just go in and flex towards the end with all kinds of synthesisers, analogue and hardware. And I think I really found such a beautiful hybrid of quite a dense and complex call and response with so many sounds."
'Anomaly' is now available.
