Puzzle Dust [Galaxy Effect Blue Vinyl]

Released on 19 April 2024 via Albert’s Favourites, Puzzle Dust arrives after four years in the making, and it sounds every bit as considered as that timeline suggests. The collaboration between Jonny Drop and Andrew Ashong feels less like a meeting of minds and more like a slow, deliberate merging of worlds.

Ashong leads with instinct. His songwriting leans into melody, stacking hooks with a patience that rewards repeat listens. Acoustic guitar threads quietly through the record, grounding its more exploratory moments. There is a sense of intent in how he subverts expectation, never quite landing where you think he might, yet always arriving somewhere satisfying.

Jonny Drop operates in the shadows. His production is built from samples that refuse to reveal themselves, reshaped and reframed until they feel entirely new. The beats sit in a downtempo pocket, but there is nothing passive about them. They shift, evolve and occasionally dissolve altogether, giving the album its fluid, almost psychedelic quality.

Across the tracklist, Lightgeist and Ephemera set a tone of hazy introspection, while One To Free and Blood deepen the album’s sense of emotional weight. On the flip, We Are Here and Sun Sailing open things out, allowing space and texture to take centre stage. The title track Puzzle Dust stands as the clearest entry point, a piece of UK soul and jazz that distils the album’s core ideas into something immediate and quietly infectious.

What makes Puzzle Dust compelling is its balance. Soul, psychedelia and jazz are all present, but none dominate. Instead, they blur into one another, carried by production that feels both intricate and unforced.

It is a record that does not rush to reveal itself. Spend time with it, and it begins to unfold, layer by layer, like something carefully assembled and then left to breathe.