They say the best albums demand the biggest sacrifices, and s ‘‘ took this rule literally. In 2025, Ford spent just over two weeks in a hospital bed undergoing treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia — and in that time, he did the only thing he knew how: made music. More specifically, a 12-track album built from synth-pop layers, electronic growls and sentimental ’80s cutaways.
It’s no surprise that this second solo album is creatively dense in theme, sound and production. Ford’s career sits within British legacy — collaborations with Arctic Monkeys and Depeche Mode, not to mention his own electronic duo Simian Mobile Disco and band The Last Shadow Puppets — therefore, brilliance was expected. But as sole vocalist, instrumentalist, composer and producer here, Ford treated this work like a daily diary, melting it together to fuel his healing. Each song runs on unfiltered language, a direct thought pulled from his stream of consciousness.
Tracks like ‘I Believe In You’ and ‘Parallel Dimension’ breathe a calm, serenity-filled air, which Ford has credited at times to the hospital ward’s calmness. One could argue that the sharp beeps of hospital machinery bleed into the record’s space-like sound effects; if a film genre could be pinned to the album, it’d be sci-fi, purely driven by the synth work, which at times treads a fine line between monotonous and cohesive. ‘The Ever After’ brings a groovy, surreal zest to the record; as if, sat with his catalogue of “swampy tape loop experiments” from previous sessions, Ford teleported to (literally) a different dimension to create, somewhere far away from needles and nausea.
Given the environment, much of the record is rich with joy and happiness, with optimism leaping around the clinical room. Opening track and lead single ‘Overtones’ is the ideal example: a synth-driven track that draws listeners in with every beat. The muffled, autotuned vocals recorded using the home-studio equipment (on a foldable IKEA table) were inspired by vintage Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Susumu Yokota cuts from home.
Every song contains a leap of happiness or innermost reflection; take the final six-minute track ‘This Will All Be A Memory Soon’, with Ford reciting “now I’m losing my hair, which just doesn’t seem fair… did I do something bad, made the universe mad?”, a reminder of exactly what this album is the result of. Whether made in a hospital bed, a million-dollar studio or an abandoned warehouse, ‘Lost In Another World’ is raw, rare and radiant — regardless of the world one is lost in.
8/10