Darkstar’s new album will be produced by Bradford musician Richard Formby.

Formby may not be an instantly recognisable name in the vein of a Rick Rubin or Chris Coady, but the man’s got cred: a former part of Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kemper’s post-Spaceman 3 project Spectrum, he’s also a member of Chris Hooson’s long-running Dakota Suite, and has played in the ever-changing line-up of Creation band Jazz Butcher. Formby’s main focus since the late ’80s, however, has been on engineering and production. Past credits involve work for 4AD, Domino, Creation, Wild Beasts and more, and he owns a studio in Leeds.

It’s presumably in this studio where Darkstar are recording the follow-up to 2010’s excellent North, released on Hyperdub. As well as Tweeting about working with Formby, the group have been relishing the chance to use Formby’s vintage tape machines (“old toys”, in Formby’s words), and perhaps most intriguingly claim to have been working with Kompakt favourites The Field.

The results of Darkstar’s work with Fornby will presumably be released on Warp; it was revealed last year that Darkstar had signed to the seminal UK label.