Dan Webb makes reinvention sound exhilarating on new album 'Lion Dance'

The Australian composer and producer Dan Webb's fifth album, 'Lion Dance', is a vivid collision of psychedelic jazz, funk, rock and electronica, shaped by his move from Melbourne to Singapore and by the new philosophies, rituals and landscapes that followed. Throughout this new collection, he regularly turns disorientation into momentum, building a record that feels constantly alive with movement.

'Soup on the Bridge of Oblivion' immediately places the album inside a world of myth, memory and reincarnation, while 'Things Rise and Fall' and 'The Self Watches Their Return' push deeper into the record's fascination with cycles. The shared Taoist thread gives the sequencing a sense of purpose, as it moves, shifts and opens up with real physicality.

Then 'KC Spider' buzzes with nervous arrival, 'Thai Basil' feels brighter and more playful, and 'Hungry Ghosts' brings a darker spiritual weight without slowing the record's momentum.

'Lemongrass’ is a notable standout, bringing together Michael Bland, Tim Lefebvre, Dennis Hamm and Nate Werth around a deeply funky core while Webb's psychedelic synths push the track into stranger territory. 'Dragon Playground' is shorter and looser, almost bursting with movement, while 'TR 24' cleverly reshapes material heard elsewhere on the album, reinforcing its obsession with return, transformation and recurrence.

There's also this real emotional weight beneath all the colour. Loss, transition and rebirth sit throughout the record, and the death of three family members during production gives those themes a significance he could never have anticipated when the album began.

Yet 'Lion Dance' keeps moving, becoming a place where grief becomes rhythm, dislocation becomes discovery, and uncertainty becomes fuel.

In all, Dan Webb has made an album about stepping into the unknown, and he makes that unknown sound absolutely thrilling.