Bassist Luis Nasser chose life. Then came the hallucinations, and with them the music. “My brain became an antenna,” he writes. He scribbled what he received onto hospital napkins as fast as he could, before it faded like the memory of a dream. He walked out with a stack of napkins, no story and a covenant he had no idea how to honor. Clarity came later, on a night walk through Parque España in Mexico City, in conversation with Rosa María Sánchez García, to whom the album is dedicated: she gave his story back to him like a mirror, and what had been an alien language became an image he could use. “Think of it as an in-between state filled with ambiguity, uncertainty and standing at a threshold into the unknown,” he sums up.

The first chapter, Truce with my Shadow, is the descent. It opens in the ward with Electronic Death Music pt 1 (The Night I Died), moves through the self-devouring bargain of Patient Spider, reaches the choice itself in Rubicon or Lethe and dissolves into the instrumental hallucination of Phantasmagoria. The second, Liminality, is the crossing: a three-part suite that walks the synapse maze, reframes pain as a guide rather than a monster (Pain is Beauty) and comes out the other side after years of falling into A Hole in a Hole in a Hole…, picked as the first single. It all runs 53 minutes, built as one narrative arc.

After the wholly instrumental Whiteout, the band returns to lyrics, with Steve Katsikas back on lead vocals, keyboards and saxophone, and its largest line-up in years: Luis Nasser (bass, sound design), Thor Bremer (drums, percussion), Tim McCaskey and Rich Poston (acoustic and electric guitars), Steve Royce (flute, vocals) and David Keller (cello). Words and music are by Luis Nasser, arrangements by the band. The album was produced by Steve Katsikas, Luis Nasser and Andy Tillotson, mixed by Steve Katsikas at Hip-Kat Studio in Louisville and mastered by Andy Tillotson in Abu Dhabi. It came out on 9 October 2026 on ProgRock.com’s Essentials, on CD digipak and digitally.

About the band

Founded by bassist Luis Nasser and rooted in Chicago, Sonus Umbra have been making music for more than three decades, music their founder dryly describes as approximating “what librarians call prog rock”. The line-up shifts by design, drawing on a wide circle of Chicago players and returning collaborators, which is why no two albums sound quite alike. Signed to ProgRock.com’s Essentials in 2023, ahead of their thirtieth anniversary, the band released Whiteout, their first fully instrumental record, on the label. On stage they have played Reggie’s in Chicago, ProgStock, ProgDay, the Terra Incognita festival in Québec and, in 2026, the Fusion festival in Stourport, their first UK show. For fans of Little Atlas, Kurgan’s Bane, Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull.

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Review published in partnership with Bad Dog Promotions, a music PR agency (UK).