Pianist/keyboardist/composer Dave Mackay is diving into the world of electronic music with their forthcoming studio album.

Announced today, The Looking Chamber is slated for a November 22 release via Colorfield Records. The 11-track album features guest appearances from Josh Johnson and Tamir Barzilay. The first single (and album opener) "Here in the Vastness" is available on digital platforms right now.

Mackay said this about their forthcoming album, which can be pre-ordered here:

“My life as a musician has been a constant act of forward motion; I’ve moved cities every four years for the past sixteen and I’ve spent a lot of that time on a tour bus, so I get very restless when I have to stay in one place for too long. Unsurprisingly, 2020 felt like a total paralysis. The need to stay connected to something during that challenging time led me to start seriously exploring a voice in electronic music. In the absence of creating with other musicians in a room, I began experimenting with sound waves in their purest form, using synthesizers as my medium.

The opportunity to explore this creative path more deeply came after a recording session at Lucy’s Meat Market in 2021. Pete told me the concept for the label he was starting and showed me all the vintage synths he had been collecting - it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring this new project to life.

Making The Looking Chamber was often an uncomfortable process. There were many moments of relinquishing control, of abandoning intention, of fighting the urge to polish each idea before executing it. It is the most ‘stream of consciousness’ work I’ve ever made, and it illustrates the restless state of mind I was in during the creation.

I named the record after psychologist Robert Fantz’s famous 1961 experiment, which challenged the long held belief that newborn babies look out into a chaotic world of which they can make little sense. By observing their eye movements in his ‘Looking Chamber’, he proved that infants intrinsically seek out new or unusual stimuli and are innately wired to fixate on patterns over random shapes, particularly those that resemble a human face. Music making is intrinsic to me, and the process feels very much the same - it is a constant search for something new; for something that makes sense; for something that feels human."

Mackay is currently touring North America as a keyboardist for Leon Bridges’ live band.