MGMT are recording their sophomore album with Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember as producer.

The album – working title Congratulations – is the follow-up to last year’s massive Oracular Spectacular, which was helmed by long-term Flaming Lips associate Dave Fridmann. Indeed, Oracular Spectacular owes a mammoth sonic debt to Wayne Coyne and co’s classic Fridmann-produced The Soft Bulletin.

Pete Kember co-founded legendary drone-rock outfit Spacemen 3 with Jason Pierce, and since the band’s demise has pursued a range of interesting solo projects under varias aliases, including Experimental Audio Research (E.A.R.) and Spectrum, fusing such disparate interests as Memphis soul and Radiophonic-era synth pastorals. It was at a recent Spectrum live show in London that MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser first hooked up with Kember, with recording sessions beginning soon after.

"[The album] has an overall air of electronic exuberance, quirky instrumental introspection and their trademark soul-searching crescendos of psychedelia," said Kember to the NME. "They’re aren’t looking to make Oracular Spectacular 1.2. Without doubt the new album is broader in its sounds, arrangements and emotions than anything they’ve done before – it’s set to be an avatar of its era."