VC-118A - Spiritual Machines (2021)

Following 2019’s Inside, VC-118A returns to Delsin to present his fourth album, Spiritual Machines. It marks an exciting shift in focus for Samuel van Dijk as his flagship project nears a decade skirting the deeper ends of techno and electro.

Over the past two and half years, van Dijk forensically reviewed the key aspects of his production process as he dug down in search of the essence of the VC-118A sound. By creating his own complement of sample banks, software racks and devices, van Dijk was able to work with a hybridised analogue-digital system purely of his own making. Less in thrall to the strict rigours of techno and electro standards, Spiritual Machines’ 13 album tracks encompass more fluid shifts into abstract and downtempo, dub-inflected realms, without losing sight of the elements that have made VC-118A so compelling from the beginning.

Burnished machine soul, aqueous atmospherics and immaculate drum programming abound, but in the mellow, enveloping sound world of Spiritual Machines you can hear van Dijk guiding his music into a broader form that sounds at once more assured and more inspired.