British synth-pop visionary Alison Goldfrapp announces her inaugural solo album, The Love Invention, set for release on May 12th via Skint/BMG Music. The upcoming record, executive produced and co-written by Alison, promises to be an evolutionary chapter in the multi-faceted artist’s forward-thinking yet timeless discography. The Love Invention features collaborations with the likes of production mastermind Richard X (Pet Shop Boys, M.I.A.), James Greenwood (Daniel Avery, Kelly Lee Owens) and Toby Scott (The Gossip, Annie).

The album’s announcement is accompanied by the hypnotic lead-single, “So Hard So Hot.”  Adorned with glossy synths and a blissfully contorting bassline, “So Hard So Hot” is the rhythm-inducing stepping stone into this kaleidoscopic new world, bottling the ephemeral joy of a dancefloor with its anthemic house beat. The song is paired with a vibrant and psychedelic video vignette directed in collaboration with Mat Maitland (Big Active). Treated with a range of AI techniques to create extreme fluctuations on a spectrum that glides towards radical fantasy, the result is a mythical world that is both powerful and fragile. It reflects the instability and hope of transitional states and recurrently seeks and finds love as a solace.

Prior to the announcement of The Love Invention, Alison hinted at the album’s alluring new world with a duo of collaborations:  Claptone’s blissful “Digging Deeper”, and Paul Woolford’s invigorating “Fever”.   These collaborative versions appear on the expanded digital version of The Love Invention while the main record features both tracks in their original solo versions.  

Alison’s dedicated approach to pop innovation has firmly situated her as the rare leftfield artist who has been embraced by the mainstream without diluting one iota of her individuality. Goldfrapp scaled the charts, with multi-platinum album sales, unforgettable Glastonbury performances, multiple Brit and Grammy nominations and an Ivor Novello for “Strict Machine.”  The momentum towards her journey into solo music was solidified back in 2021, when she was approached by Röyksopp to collaborate on two tracks for their seventh album Profound Mysteries.

The Love Invention marks Alison’s reawakening as a dancefloor priestess, in an intoxicating showcase of the disco and house influences that have always been at the heart of her musical DNA. A steadfast independence courses through The Love Invention, an ethos which was essential to Alison’s creative process.  Faced with the realities of social distancing, Alison set about building a studio in her east London home.  Her home studio space also became key to unlocking the fantastical reveries that power The Love Invention. 

While Alison’s solo music decisively signals the birth of her independent artistic identity, fans of Goldfrapp classics like Black Cherry and Supernature will find much to love in The Love Invention’s disco strut, shot through with Alison’s deepened, longtime fascination with pleasure vs restraint and (wo)man vs machine. Heady themes remain, but here they are tackled with a new worldly-wise complexity and humour. 

In Alison’s quintessentially complex way, The Love Invention’s moments of sincerity are paired with a devious sense of fun. With Balearic synths and a swooping punch-the-air chorus, “Love Invention” captures Alison in thrall to pleasure by playfully imagining a “machine or pill that gives you a feeling of complete euphoria.”  On album highlight “The Beat Divine,” a sultry slice of after-dark disco, she has never sounded more infatuated with the power of music to bring people together. “You’re the music, sensual elevation,” she sings, as if lost in the life-affirming magic of the dancefloor.

The Love Invention is unmistakably the work of Alison Goldfrapp as a pop auteur, a dazzling showcase of her matured musicianship as well as her relentless curiosity for the new, reintroducing music fans to an incredible artist who – twenty-plus years into her amazing career – sounds more gloriously liberated than ever.

The Love Invention will be available on CD, black 180g vinyl and a limited edition purple vinyl from indie record stores. Alison’s official artist store also has a limited edition green vinyl as well as exclusive album merchandise.

Photo Courtesy: Mat Maitland