Visions of Light - The Mandala Vortex (2025)

Simon Sheldon’s Freebooter Lounge label, an imprint famed for its’ eclectic and freewheeling approach to releasing music, has long been a favourite of NuNorthern Soul founder Phil Cooper. As a result, when Sheldon approached him with a new project, all-star Freebooter Lounge trio Visions of Light, Cooper had no hesitation in snapping up the resulting album, The Mandala Vortex.

Produced by Sheldon and two of his most trusted artists, Muzka and Dan Dub Lounge, the ten-track album effortlessly joins the dots between ambient, dub, acid, Balearic beats and sun-soaked, slow motion dancefloor delights. Throughout, it has a coherent and wonderfully immersive aural aesthetic, with enveloping chords, dubby basslines, effects-laden vocal snippets and fluttering instrumentation creating a sunset and sunrise-ready mood.

This is evident from the start, where ‘Trip’ – a heady, emotive blend of woozy ambient chords, languid dub rhythms and eyes-closed female vocals – delivers a deliciously gentle and sun-baked introduction to the treats to come. It remains at the forefront throughout, as Visions of Light shuffle between acid-flecked Balearic acid dub (‘Breathe’), spaced-out dancefloor dub (‘The Last Domino’), ultra-deep, slo-mo dub house (‘Clearwater’) and jazzy, lightly dub-flecked downtempo soundscapes (the pastoral flutes and glistening guitars of ‘Destination’).

It says a lot about the quality of The Mandala Vortex that highlighting a few choice cuts is not enough to do the album justice. There are life-affirming, meditative and comforting sonic gems around every corner, from the yearning slow breeze of ‘Daytime’ and the exotic electronica-goes-digi-dub pulse of ‘Bring It Back’, to the piano-and-sax-laden aural colour of ‘Echoes of Time’, the TB-303-flecked White Isle grooves of ‘Sands’, and the Tabla-driven early morning mysticism of closing cut ‘Stages’.

Firmly rooted in the skeletal rhythms of dub but encased within the sounds and structures of 21st century Balearica, The Mandala Vortex is a fine first full-length outing from NuNorthern Soul’s latest signings.