Enigmatic polymath Keaton Henson returned with an emotive new single titled “Lazy Magician”. The track marks his first new material since 2024’s instrumental album Somnambulant Cycles and is co-written with Ratboys’ Julia Steiner.

This new material hints at Henson beginning to shed the “quiet boy” persona that has defined much of his career – if we’re to omit his myriad efforts composing for film and theatre, an electronic side project, his classical offerings, his illustration and writing work – those preconceived notions might find themselves gradually yielding to a welcome reappraisal.

Speaking on the single, Henson explains: “Julia’s voice is so evocative of that sound to me, it reminds me of when I first heard Rilo Kiley. She has a lot of the suburban magic-realism of the American bands I loved back then. I wrote the guitar parts and first lines to the drum machine and we both sort of just free-wrote the rest. Allowing our subconscious to form the narrative. I like that it’s almost like these two lonely souls singing next to each other, but sometimes over each other, like we’re so lost in our own self-reflection we’re unaware we’re in a duet.”

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