The record brings the Dance To Nomine releases into a wider body of work, with acoustic instrumentation, vocals and tracks already being interpreted by movement artists. Available through digital streaming and download, with a special collector’s vinyl edition planned.
This is Nomine’s third full-length album since the project began in 2014. It follows his debut album Inside Nomine, released on Tempa in 2015, and Ascension, his 2022 collaborative album with Youngsta, released through Sentry Records.
Born out of a need for change, some brutal life decisions and a desire to break long-established patterns, Nomine presents Break The Rhythm, a 10-track album that pushes his sound into new territory while remaining rooted in the elements that have defined his music from the beginning: sub bass, rhythm, atmosphere, organic instrumentation and influences from around the world.
The title is more than the name of a track. At the end of 2025, Nomine reached a point where change had become necessary, both personally and creatively. The idea became simple: if we want different, we must do different. That thinking runs through the album.
Rather than abandoning the Nomine sound, Break The Rhythm expands it. Electronic music, bass music, dub, dubstep, trip hop, world music and acoustic instrumentation move across tempos from 87 to 140 BPM. Middle Eastern, Japanese, Bulgarian, tango and other musical influences appear throughout, but the common thread remains unmistakably Nomine: physical low end, hypnotic repetition, space, atmosphere and music designed to be felt as much as heard.
Another major influence on the project came from something that had been developing organically for years. Nomine became increasingly aware of dancers and movement artists around the world using his music across disciplines including contemporary dance, street dance, hip hop, ballet, jazz, pole, belly dance, fusion dance, fire performance, hair hanging, aerial dance and more. Cirque du Soleil dancers also shared movement to his music. At one point, Madonna shared footage of dancers performing to Nomine’s music inside an ancient Italian cave on her Instagram.
Nomine began exploring why the music connected so naturally with movement, from sound-system culture to an unexpected second life in dance and movement.
That idea developed into Dance To Nomine, both the label releasing this album and a wider collaborative project connecting music with dancers, choreographers, musicians and movement artists internationally. Recent collaborations have already brought the Dance To Nomine label tracks deeper into the physical world, with further plans developing around live performances, seated productions, dance events and purpose-built collaborations in different countries.
Break The Rhythm is the musical foundation of that next chapter.
Track by track
The album opens with Freedom, featuring Katja, a mystical and spacious introduction built from organic instrumentation, Eastern colours, electronica and heavyweight sub bass. It immediately signals the broader palette of the record while retaining the weight and atmosphere associated with Nomine.
Katja returns on Pain Body, where hypnotic guitar figures, distorted bass, militant drums and an intense vocal sit within a darker 140 BPM framework. The song draws inspiration from Eckhart Tolle’s concept of the pain-body, the accumulated emotional pain and unconscious patterns we can continue carrying long after the original experience has passed.
Mirage, featuring Moroccan vocalist Zeyneb, moves deeper into Middle Eastern and North African territory. Oud, flute, percussion and Zeyneb’s hypnotic vocal chants sit against deep electronic production and the low-end pressure at the centre of Nomine’s sound.
The Rain shifts the focus to Japan. Opening with words from Japanese poet Yukio Tsuji, the track combines taiko drums, koto, rain sticks and layered percussion with restrained electronics and sub bass. Its themes of pressure, perspective and release also mirror the personal circumstances from which the wider album began to emerge.
Zeyneb returns for Desert Dust, a darker and more haunting piece built around Middle Eastern inspired instrumentation, heavy bass, atmosphere and her distinctive vocal chants.
On Mother, Nomine reconnects with a thread that reaches back to one of his best-known tracks, To The Sky. Like that earlier collaboration with Bulgarian vocalist Iustina, Mother is sung in Bulgarian, this time by Angie. Built from an initial musical idea sent to the vocalist, Angie’s performance became the emotional centre of the track. The lyrics describe sunlight rising above a green forest, a nightingale singing from a branch and the warmth of nature awakening both the face and the soul. It acts as an unofficial spiritual successor to To The Sky, while taking the idea somewhere new.
The album’s title track, Break The Rhythm, brings the philosophy behind the whole project into focus. Again featuring Katja, the track draws from trip hop, dub, bass music and the wider Nomine palette. Its central idea came directly from the period of change that triggered the album: if we want something different, we must do something different.
From there, Tango Dub pulls Nuevo Tango into Nomine’s world, combining harmonica, strings, chord progressions, muted dub techniques, electronic production and deep bass into one of the album’s more unusual hybrids.
In Bronze I Sleep, featuring Icelandic vocalist STÍNA ÁGÚSTSDÓTTIR, moves into a haunting, baroque-inspired space of piano, melody and voice. Its story imagines two bronze statues temporarily coming to life, finding and connecting with one another while knowing that their time together is limited. At its centre is a simple idea: time is short, so what happens while we have it matters.
The record closes with Filthy, again featuring Zeyneb. Where Mirage explored Middle Eastern influence through space and hypnosis, Filthy pushes similar colours into something much darker and more aggressive, combining gritty breakbeats, distorted bass, haunting chants and crushing halftime rhythm.
Across its ten tracks, Break The Rhythm moves between cultures, tempos and styles without losing its centre. It is an album about change, but not reinvention for the sake of it. It is about recognising when familiar patterns have stopped working, making difficult decisions and allowing those changes to open new creative possibilities.
For Nomine, breaking the rhythm became both the process and the result.
Tracklist
- Nomine feat. Katja, Freedom [Pía Apsara]
- Nomine feat. Katja, Pain Body [Haus of Pole]
- Nomine feat. Zeyneb, Mirage
- Nomine, The Rain
- Nomine feat. Zeyneb, Desert Dust [Spiral Orchid]
- Nomine feat. Angie, Mother
- Nomine feat. Katja, Break The Rhythm
- Nomine, Tango Dub
- Nomine feat. STÍNA ÁGÚSTSDÓTTIR, In Bronze I Sleep
- Nomine feat. Zeyneb, Filthy
