Lunatic Calm open the vault again on More Lunatic Than Calm Vol. 2

Lunatic Calm have released More Lunatic Than Calm Vol. 2, the latest stage in Simon Shackleton’s ongoing excavation of the duo’s archive. The nine-track collection arrived on 11 September and draws from material created between 1996 and 2002, the period in which Shackleton and Howie Saunders pushed breakbeat, acid, industrial electronics, guitars and cinematic sound design into a particularly volatile hybrid.

The project follows More Lunatic Than Calm Vol. 1 and the slower, more atmospheric More Calm Than Lunatic. Together, those releases are reframing the group’s catalogue around music that either never made the original albums, circulated only in alternate form or survived as fragments, mixes and unfinished archive material. Vol. 2 stays on the heavier side: distorted breaks, acid pressure and club-focused revisions dominate the sequence.

Nine tracks rebuild the edges of the original catalogue

The collection opens with “Neon Ray (Jammin’ With The Man Mix)” and moves through alternate versions of “Roll The Dice”, “Long Shadows”, “Quicktime Culture” and “Sound Of The Revolution” before reaching a new acid treatment of “Leave You Far Behind”. The final stretch includes “Losing The Rush”, “White Line Fever (Acid Frenzy Mix)” and a long Elite Force remix of “Basement Level”.

That tracklist makes the archive useful rather than merely nostalgic. Several titles are recognisable from Lunatic Calm’s original period, but the versions often sit outside the familiar album sequence. In other cases, the material had effectively disappeared from public view. Shackleton has described the project as a way of pulling those pieces out of hard drives, tapes and old session material while keeping their rougher character intact.

The archive reaches back to a production setup built before modern recall

Part of the appeal is technical. Lunatic Calm’s first album Metropol was built with an Atari ST, Akai S1000 samplers, hardware synths and outboard effects, with guitars and microphones routed through a Mackie desk. That workflow is a long way from the instant recall of a current DAW project. Recovering alternate mixes from that era is therefore closer to reconstruction and curation than simply opening an old session and bouncing a new master.

Shackleton has already demonstrated how far that problem can go. For the 2025 remake of “Leave You Far Behind”, he rebuilt the track without the original session files, using surviving material and hardware references to reconstruct its sound. Vol. 2 takes a different route: the emphasis is on archive versions that already existed in some form, then restoring and organising them into a coherent release.

Breakbeat, rock and acid remain difficult to separate cleanly

Lunatic Calm’s original identity emerged at a moment when UK electronic music was unusually porous. Big beat, breaks, industrial rock, trip-hop and alternative guitar music overlapped in clubs, film soundtracks and festival line-ups. The duo’s records sat inside that exchange without fitting neatly into one category. “Leave You Far Behind” became the obvious reference point, but the archive makes clear that the surrounding work was broader than one crossover single.

That matters because retrospective writing on the late 1990s often flattens the period into a handful of major acts. Lunatic Calm’s material is useful precisely because it shows the messier middle ground: sampled drums next to live instrumentation, acid lines against distorted guitars, cinematic transitions inside tracks still built to hit hard on a system. Vol. 2 preserves that instability rather than polishing it into a cleaner modern genre frame.

The second volume is part of a wider catalogue reconstruction

The release does not stand alone. More Lunatic Than Calm Vol. 1 established the aggressive side of the archive, while More Calm Than Lunatic moved toward dub, trip-hop, downtempo breaks and more introspective versions. Vol. 2 returns to physical impact. Put together, the three releases divide the archive by character rather than chronology, which makes the catalogue easier to read than one oversized box of outtakes would.

The approach also reflects how Shackleton now works across several aliases. Elite Force remains tied to club-focused electronics, his solo work has moved further into cinematic and song-based territory, and Lunatic Calm functions increasingly as an archival project whose unreleased material is being restored from the original period. That separation gives each body of work a clearer role without pretending the borders between them were ever absolute.

Losing The Rush finally gets a proper release

One of the clearest examples is “Losing The Rush”. Shackleton says he had shared fragments of the track before, but it had never received a proper release. For Vol. 2, the music has been paired with previously unseen footage from Lunatic Calm’s 1998 US travels — motel rooms, backstage moments and long stretches of road rather than a newly staged nostalgia piece.

That choice suits the whole project. The strongest material in this archive campaign comes from leaving the period visible: old footage stays old, mixes retain their original abrasiveness, and the new framing provides enough context to understand where the tracks came from. There is restoration, but not an attempt to disguise the age of the source.

Shackleton has also made clear that the vault is not empty yet. Vol. 2 closes another section of the archive without presenting itself as the final word. For now, these nine tracks add a rougher and more detailed layer to the public version of Lunatic Calm — one built from music that spent more than two decades outside the official album story.