Sub Focus Pushes Drum & Bass Into the Cosmos With New Album, “Contact”: Listen

Sub Focus looks to the stars on his fourth solo album, blending frenetic drum and bass beats with celestial vocals.

Sub Focus reaches into a stratosphere well beyond the dancefloor on Contact, a 14-track album shaped around humanity’s long-standing urge to send messages into the unknown.

Influenced by the Voyager mission and the Golden Record, the drum & bass superstar built a body of work that feels expansive but still tightly engineered, connecting calls into the void with his signature sound. Across his fourth album, he builds a universe that pushes drum & bass into a wider constellation of sounds, arriving as one of his most cohesive and ambitious projects to date.

Contact, he said, is an ode to the drum & bass genre.

“I’m really proud of this one,” Sub Focus wrote in a social media post. “Drum & Bass is in such rude health right now – and I wanted to make a full length all about the genre this time around.”

sub focus contact — The artwork of Sub Focus’ fourth album, “Contact.”

Contact opens with “Ecuador,” an unexpectedly bright cut with Fireboy DML. The lyric “I’m in outer space, not here anymore” serves as a clear launch pad for the album’s concept, a fast and agile introduction that sets the tone for the journey ahead.

“So Many Colours” follows as Poppy Baskcomb’s voice climbs over a luminous progression, pushed forward by a pulsing low end. “Original Don” then marks the first real plunge into darker terrain. Fireboy DML and Irah steer the track with sharp vocal phrasing while Sub Focus builds a dense, heavy foundation underneath. It’s a track clearly built for massive systems, the kind meant to shake a festival stage.

“Elevate” then arrives as a release valve, landing with a lighter touch and a chorus meant for feel-good crowd moments. The energy is still high, but the track offers enough lift to break up the album’s early intensity.

That contrast makes “Entwined” hit even harder. The high-profile collaboration with Grimes shifts the album’s cosmic theme into clearer focus. Her voice drifts in like a signal cutting through static before the production accelerates, shifting into something colder and echoing the album’s fascination with space and the unknown.

“On & On” brings in bbyclose, who leans into a glossy vocal tone over rapid-fire production that never loses its grip. Sub Focus punctuates the arrangement with brief reprieves that let her voice breathe for a moment before snapping the tempo back into motion. It’s one of the album’s standouts and one of the year’s best drum & bass records.

“Go Back,” released last year alongside John Summit and Julia Church, remains the album’s clearest crossover moment. Summit’s house roots shape the first half before Sub Focus pulls the track into a drum & bass sequence that feels both weightless and effortless. Church’s vocal carries the emotional weight, and the tempo shift remains one of the collaboration’s strongest elements.

“Water & Fire” with Connie Constance shifts into a more atmospheric space, opening with airy vocals before the drums take shape. The production flickers with subtle details that keep everything in motion without overcrowding the arrangement. “Lost in Heaven,” the album’s sole downtempo moment, gives Emily Makis room to stretch into a smoother, softer delivery. It functions as the album’s breath before the final climb.

“Push the Tempo” and “Let Your Body Rock” reignite the energy, the former landing as a club-minded cut with sharp phrasing from Katy B and the latter acting as a full-throttle sprint designed for the big stages Sub Focus now commands.

“Wildfire” brings one of the strongest vocal performances on the album, with Jo Hill cutting through the production’s tightly wound energy before the album closes by virtue of “Fade,” an atmospheric track that swells slowly before erupting into a rush of frenetic drums. Inéz’s voice grows from restrained to fully released, pulling the album into a final emotional peak before the energy burns off.

You can listen to Contact below and find the new album on streaming platforms here.