Harnessing the stars to create celestial wavetables, George FitzGerald’s brilliant new offering, Stellar Drifting, is the fruit of his new studio, a lockdown obsession with the Hubble Telescope and a desire to turn photographs of space into synthesised sound. Stellar Drifting sees FitzGerald enlist the vocal talents of labelmate Panda Bear, Derry singer/songwriter SOAK, and London Grammar who return the favour after FitzGerald contributed to their 2021 album, Californian Soil.
Following a move to his new studio in Bermondsey, FitzGerald downsized some of his analogue synth collection and dove deeper into his soft synth arsenal to brilliant effect on standout tracks, Passed Tense (with the aforementioned Panda Bear) and the otherworldly, Ultraviolet. Whilst exploring these new sonic territories, FitzGerald has retained the genre-straddling skill that made previous albums, Fading Love and 2018’s All That Must Be, such entrancing and essential components of the electronic music firmament.
Stellar Drifting has an intriguing back story of you wanting to turn space into sound, doesn’t it?
“It’s something I’ve been toying with for three or four years, then I got more interested in it during the pandemic when we all had a lot more time on our hands. Simultaneously in the studio I had this thing where I wanted to switch up some of the sound sources or just make a break from just coming into the studio and switching on the same old synthesisers.
