Nearly five years passed between Disclosure releasing their second album, Caracal, and this, their extraordinary third. “There’s a threshold you have to hit as an artist before you can take any substantial time away and people will still give a shit when you get back,” Guy Lawrence tells Apple Music. “After surpassing every expectation we had as an electronic music duo from Surrey, we felt we were probably—hopefully—in that position.” ENERGY justifies the Lawrence brothers’ sabbatical. It also justifies the all-caps title. The album is a carnival of bustling, stimulating sounds that takes in more genres than we’ve probably got room to list. “It’s the first time an album title relates to what’s on the record,” Howard says. “We just liked the word when naming Settle. Caracal is named after my favorite cat. This one is also generally just a bit more tactical than the others. We’ve now got a wider vocabulary. Our skills have progressed to the point where we can choose—like, Guy can choose to put together a French house tune, then I can say I want the chords to make me feel a certain way, and I have those chords available to me now. Before, I would just play all the chords I knew.” Allow the Lawrence brothers to talk you through their evolution with a track-by-track guide to ENERGY.

Featuring additional contributors and performances from Aminé, Blick Bassy, Channnel Tres, Common, Fatoumata Diawara, Kehlani, Kelis, Mick Jenkins, slowthai & Syd.