The Undivided Five

The Undivided Five sees contemporary ambient and electronic music duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen pay greater heed to the small details in their sound than previously, something they say has been encouraged by the move to Ninja Tune. It's been their first opportunity since their debut to create something that's solely guided by their ideas, and it represented an opportunity to call back to that first outing while also building on the various ways in which they've grown. "We understand that times have changed," they say. "We have evolved, but we also didn't want to forget the beginning."

However, this change of surroundings does not signal any great stylistic shift in the project's music - the duo of Dustin O'Halloran and Adam Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid, The Dead Texan) continue to go deep on their widescreen contemporary classical sound here.

The use of granular synthesis and time-stretched textures provides their compositions with yet more space. The influence of contemporaries Olafur Arnalds and Sigur Ros remains as strong as ever in the pair's aesthetic.

From the swelling strings of opener Our Lord Debussy to the intimate, spare piano chords on final track Keep It Dark, Deutschland, everything here is designed with the intention of stoking strong emotion in the listener.

They channel influences such as Debussy, whose big chords and complicated arrangements inform a lot of their approach - parts that sound simple but require great skill to execute. Likewise, Hilma af Klint - one of the first abstract Western artists - informed their ideas about drawing on spiritual influences to shape their work. "It's like an invisible hand guiding things," they say. This chimed with the duo's unspoken approach to collaboration, and nudged them to return to their writing process centred around the harmonic perfect fifth; the divine interval, the five senses - The Undivided Five.