seemed to have found a renewed sense of creativity with 2019's , their electronic companion collaboration to 2018's with producer/instrumentalist (aka ). It was a feeling of starting anew that the British group underlined by bringing on board as full-time bandmember for their seventh studio album, 2022's . An acronym for "Editors Blanck Mass," should appeal to both longtime fans of the group's epic post-punk sound and anyone who perked up with the robust electronic dynamism that marked . Without losing any of their distinctive, cinematically austere style, have embraced a clubby, dare you say, fun exuberance. These are tsunami-level productions marked by shimmering waves of synthy distortion, doomy bass grooves, and as always, singer 's Teutonic baritone croon. Some cuts, like the hooky "Karma Climb" and "Strawberry Lemonade," have that twangy guitar and whip-cracking Krautrock beat of classic . Others, like the opening "Heart Attack," are surprisingly cheeky, sounding something like a '90s rave DJ'd by a Mario Brothers video game. Much of this leads to the mid-album "Silence," a Homeric ballad in which soars through the cosmos on a delicate rainbow of synth and chimes before crashing to the earth in a meteor shower of over-driven electric guitar squelch and digital distortion. It's a bold, deeply emotive moment, evoking the heartfelt style of . That these tracks, as with all of , feel both familiar and unexpectedly fresh speaks to the alchemical spark between and . ~ Matt Collar