Apart from the "Bloom" single in December, the last couple of years have been pretty quiet for Chemist, Tom E Vercetti and Lovedr0id, aka Silk Road Assassins. Prior to that, their last substantial release was 2016's Reflection Spaces, an impressive collection of eerie electronics and subtle club tracks. In the interim period, of course, each of the three producers was spending time on their own solo careers, but they were always going to return.

Now they're back with news of their debut album proper (State Of Ruin, due Feb. 8 via Planet Mu) and it seems as if everything we loved about Reflection Spaces has been amplified and taken even further. Even on a track like "Taste Of Metal", which we're premiering below and is pure bars—courtesy of K9—the trio's love of sci-fi soundscapes and bleepy futurism shines through in droves.

Ahead of the album's release, we sat down for a quick chat with Chemist to discuss the trio's quiet period, their mutual love of video games and what the future holds for Silk Road Assassins.

From reading various interviews and features, it sounds as if the Silk Road Assassins project took on a life of its own. How much of this was planned?

None at all, really. Me and Tom E.V. have been writing music since 2010 but never really got any project to stick as well as SRA did. It's mad how far it's come since then.

Do you plan to all maintain your solo ventures alongside SRA? Has it been a difficult balance to strike so far?

We've all put the solo stuff on the back burner for a while now because we've putting everything into the album. It has been difficult balancing the solo vs collaborative stuff, because everything we've been writing has been for SRA.

How does your mutual love of video games feed into your sound what SRA is about?

We became friends through our mutual love of games, so it's only fair to say it's been the main source we draw from when it comes to building music. Our favourite games have really influenced the sound palette and melodic choices we make.

How have your goals and expectations for Silk Road Assassins changed in the few years it's been going?

We originally started unsure about what we wanted to achieve with the project. We were pulling in a few different directions at once—like film, game scoring, rap production, club music—so we ended up bringing it all together. In the beginning, we never imagined to release anything we were writing so to be on a label like Planet Mu, especially after listening to a lot of their back catalogue growing up, is really cool.

Where do you see the SRA team-up going long term?

We haven't really talked about our plans going forward for SRA yet, as we're taking a break after working on the album for so long. We're definitely going back to our solo projects in the meantime though.