Szun Waves’ sense of cosmic spirituality loosely compares to The Comet Is Coming, with the latter’s rave apocalypse replaced by a more mournful grandeur. The trio have thriving careers beyond this band, with keyboardist/producer Luke Abbott’s remix work for the likes of Jon Hopkins, saxist Jack Wylie’s main Portico Quartet gig and drummer Laurence Pike joining veteran Aussie art-rockers Liars. But Szun Waves are on their own particular quest.

“The last record felt like drifting in space,” Abbott says of second album New Hymn to Freedom, “but I see this new record as a journey from the outer reaches of the universe down onto the Earth.” Visual artist Dom Harwood’s video for ‘New Universe’ shows the layers of existence they’re grappling with, as millennia-long geological ripples vie with cellular jungles and digital blueprints sketched in the blackness of space, soundtracked by tumbling African percussion and wild sax cries.

Earth Patterns still feels like a description of an expanding universe, albeit one which may leave us behind. The synth chords of opener ‘Exploding Upwards’ are freighted with sadness, slow and tragically inevitable. Met by Wylie’s huge, weary sax tone, and the liquid glisten of cymbals in a thickly produced, cosmic dust swirl, its final symphonic surge is like seeing a sunrise from space. Wylie is elegiac on ‘Willow Leaf Pear’, which suggests a return to Eden. ‘Garden’ and the closing ‘Atomkerne’ are fearfully premonitory, as synth oscillations seem to accelerate into outer space, and self-destruct.