Google Earth, the union of pioneering songwriter and producer John Vanderslice and his longtime collaborator James Riotto, recently announced their sophomore album, the aptly titled for Mac OS X 10.11, due out August 29th. Today’s preview is the bouncy and spry “endless corridor,” which operates like a dance song set to a modified reggaeton beat, various saxophone motifs and gritty synth lines weaving in and out.

“This is one of those songs that flows effortlessly but took 100 hours to tetris in,” shares Vanderslice. “It almost didn’t make the record until Andrew Maguire added percussion and a blurring of the lines between drum machine and live room recording! Like all Google Earth songs, most of the song was recorded by Jamie and me in a 2 hour improv session. We then built it out from there.” 

“Years ago I got stoned and went to see Interstellar in IMAX, and before the movie there was a sort of demonstration of the Dolby Sound system with lots of groovy, very hi-fi, but also quite silly, percussion music. I actually think John was with me, and we laughed so hard in the theater as it played. Endless Corridor sort of reminds me of that music,” shares Riotto.

Like the duo’s surprising and entirely unique 2024 debut Street View, the new record is synth and drum machine heavy, with sparse moments of analog percussive instruments, reed instruments, guitars, and basses. There are only a few traditional songs. The rest of the space is dedicated to almost pure electronica, occasionally embellished with a single line or single word spliced, distorted, and pitched beyond recognition. It’s another extension of the ever expanding music universe that Vanderslice has occupied since his relocation from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and his embrace of digital experimentation after the shuttering of his iconic Tiny Telephone studio.