Ahead of the release of his new The Soft Pink Truth album Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?, out October 21st, prolific sound artist and producer Drew Daniel has shared new single “La Joie Devant La Mort”. The track takes a sentence in French by philosopher and erotica author Georges Bataille (“once more our steps lead us / into the forest and into the night / in search / of joy / before death”) and turns it into the lyrics of a gothic disco anthem with vocals courtesy of Jamie Stewart (XIu Xiu). Intoned over scything disco strings and quantized insect noises, Bataille’s cryptic remarks skips the seminar room for a late night queer cruising-ground.

Asked to explain his new album’s gauntlet-throwing title, Drew Daniel says: “Years ago a friend was DJing in a club and a woman came into the DJ booth and asked ‘is it going to get any deeper than this?’ and the phrase became a kind of mantra for us. What did she really want? This album was created as an attempt to imagine possible musical responses to her question.” Throughout the ten songs of the album, the provocation to go “deeper” prompts promiscuous moves across the genres of disco, minimalism, ambient, and jazz, sliding onto and off of the dancefloor, sweeping higher and lower on the scale of frequencies, engaging both philosophical texts re-set as pop lyrics and wordless glossolalia. Rather than a dryly pursued thesis, the music flows across emotional terrain from upfront peaks to melancholic valleys, often within the same song. This is the case on opening track “Deeper,” which morphs from Brainticket-esque keyboard loops to a Chic disco groove to a Stars Of The Lid style heavy drone over eleven minutes. Evenly divided between opening lift-off, rhythmic peaks, and extended, spaced-out decrescendos, this is music that flickers and pulses and melts.

Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? will be released on deluxe double-LP, featuring artwork by Robert Beatty (Oneohtrix Point Never, The Weeknd, The Flaming Lips). The companion mini-album Was It Ever Real? Is out now, featuring the dark-room mix of “Is It Going To Get Any Deeper…” and a cover of Coil’s immortal queer classic “The Anal Staircase”.

Pre-order The Soft Pink Truth’s Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?: here. and check out the Jamie Stewart collaboration on bandcamp here. and watch the video for “”Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? (Dark Room Mix)” below.