Out now: Danny L Harle & Rachika Nayar – Azimuth Divergence

Brooklyn-based composer and producer Rachika Nayar and London-based musician, composer and producer Danny L Harle today release Azimuth Divergence. The eight track project reimagines Harle’s recent acclaimed ‘Azimuth’ single, featuring vocals from Caroline Polachek, as the source material for each track.

Nayar, who’s released two albums (2021’s Our Hands Against The Dusk and 2022’s Heaven Come Crashing), and this year’s collaborative Disiniblud album with Nina Keith, is a distinctive voice in contemporary experimental music: blending ambient, electronic, neoclassical and post-rock.. She uses guitar as a portal into abstraction and emotional depth, sculpting immersive sound worlds that challenge genre boundaries. Here, she dissects Harle’s densely-arranged original material, teasing and unravelling it into something entirely new.

Azimuth Divergence follows August’s Starlight Divergence release, which saw Dutch experimental producer Torus applying his own distinct musical process to Harle’s ‘Starlight‘ collaboration with PinkPantheress. The Divergence series was conceived while Harle was reviewing material for his forthcoming debut album Cerulean, realising how much of it could branch out into new, unexpected directions. He invited other artists to harvest these stems and form their own unique works.

Meanwhile, Harle recently announced full details of Cerulean, which will be released on 13th February 2026 via XL Recordings / Remote Control Records. The album marks his first full-length release on XL Recordings and is his most definitive artistic statement to date. Following 2021’s immersive Harlecore project, Harle considers Cerulean his true debut. It’s a voyage into vast sonic landscapes where speaker-blowing bass and euphoric trance synths meet classical harmonies, tactile sound design and Harle’s own field recordings. It embodies Harle’s pursuit of melancholic euphoria – a blend of megalophobic majesty and raw humanity – inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, existing “on the threshold between dreams and reality.”

Seeking “the best melodies sung by the best voices,” Harle enlisted an exceptional cast of collaborators, including Caroline Polachek, Clairo, Julia Michaels, PinkPantheress, Oklou and MNEK, alongside newer voices like kacha, and even his own daughters. Across 13 tracks, Cerulean balances dancefloor power with emotional resonance to brilliant effect. Meanwhile, Harle’s wide-ranging influences – from hedonistic rave to the haunting Dark Souls video game series, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, and Renaissance and Elizabethan composers like Monteverdi, Thomas Tallis, and William Byrd – underpin the album’s dazzling, genre (and centuries)-spanning focus.

Stream / download Azimuth Divergence here.
Pre-order / pre-save Cerulean here.