Back in 2022, when Empress Nouveau was completed, A Journey of Giraffes (aka John Lane) had already planned for a companion album to be titled Emperor Deco. As Lane explains, “Empress Nouveau had been something where I tried to honor & worship some aspects of a feminine aesthetic. With Emperor Deco, I wanted to create her partner — a little more rough-edged, slightly less gentle as the masculine other half.”

Emperor Deco attempts to fuse jazz with ambient & experimental. Influences for the compositions drew from Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Sam Gendel, Rei Harakami, and Lane’s mentor-in-spirit, Susumu Yokota.

“When all is said and done, this is meant to be a jazz album with enough dream-like curves & twists that perhaps make it something else entirely.”

A Journey of Giraffes: Emperor Deco will be released on limited CD and digital March 7, 2025 on Somewherecold Records. 

“After last year’s long form Retro Porter (one of my choice albums of 2024) John’s deco-imbued, romantic and smoky album returns to the shorter track format with a generous offering of twenty-two musical pieces, experiences and evocations that never drag, seem indulgent or test the patience: You could say John has found the perfect length of time in which to express himself on an album in which each track is perfectly realised and executed; existing both as a singular moment, passage of time, and yet also forming part of a one whole experience of repeating signatures. This could (should) be the album that finally cements John’s reputation as one of the most imaginative and prolific artists working in this, or these, fields of compositional experimentation.”
~Dominic Valvona
monolithcocktail.com/2025/03/05/the-perusal-65-the-young-mothers-inturist-nickolas-mohanna-a-journey-of-giraffes/