Aaron Hibell on 'SYNCHRONICITY,' His Debut Album That 'Sits Somewhere Between the Dance Floor and Film Score' [Q&A]

SYNCHRONICITY opens with a stanza from Dylan Thomas’ villanelle, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

“Do not go gentle into that good night,” a voice booms like a battle cry over a bed of strings. “Old age should burn and rave at close of day/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The poem has long lived in English curricula, famous for the claim it makes through metaphor: death, though inevitable, must be fought. Fittingly, the track that features the excerpt is titled “ascension.” Also fitting: Aaron Hibell’s path to his debut album, six years in the making and out now via Astralwerks, embodies the same resistance and conviction Thomas urges. 

Symbolically, SYNCHRONICITY is the result of that same rage – against the chronic and unpredictable health issues he’s balanced amid increasingly busy tour and release schedules, and against the creative pressure and burnout that complicated the album-making process. Last February, as he played the project for me at a studio in Santa Monica, Hibell shared that he’d scrapped an entirely different album he’d spent more than a year making and started over. The experience was frustrating – enough to make him wonder whether he still wanted to make music at all.

Of course, the succinct yet intricate eight-track LP proves that the UK composer and producer – whose credits include scoring Ultra Music Festival Miami’s 2024 aftermovie and the 2023 film Tetris – did not go gentle into that good night. A bold and engrossing blend of trance, house, melodic techno, and orchestral influence, the album, Hibell says, “sits somewhere between the dance floor and film score.” 

It arrives in tandem with a live North American tour spanning 24 cities that will kick off in Toronto on April 21, building on Hibell’s first set of stateside shows in New York and Los Angeles just last fall. In addition to taking his cinematic show on the road, Hibell will play Tomorrowland and Cercle’s 2026 festival at France’s National Air and Space Museum.

In an intimate Q&A with Beatportal, Hibell opens up about his evolution as an artist and why the album – named after Carl Jung’s theory of meaningful coincidences – arrives not late, but right on time.

Between performances at Tomorrowland and Boiler Room London, production work on the 2025 soundtrack for Cercle Odyssey's 360-degree concert series, and 50 million views across platforms on a single remix, you’ve already amassed the kind of accolades many artists achieve after releasing a debut album. Does this project feel overdue or right on time for you?

For me, it feels right on time. I’ve released a lot of music over the past few years, but I think an album asks something different of you. It’s not just about individual tracks working in isolation; it’s about building a world that everything lives inside. I didn’t want to rush that process. The project needed time for the sound, the ideas, and even my own perspective on music to mature. Looking back, those years of releasing mixtapes, singles, and EPs were instrumental in the process.

Six years is enough time to fundamentally reshape both your personal life and your artistic identity, consciously and unconsciously. How does SYNCHRONICITY sonically reflect this evolution?

The biggest shift is probably emotional range. Earlier in my career, I was very focused on impact and energy in a club context, but over time, I became more interested in tension, space, and storytelling within electronic music. SYNCHRONICITY reflects that. There are moments that feel very euphoric and expansive, but also moments that are quieter, more introspective, more cinematic. 

I’ve always loved the feeling of music that sits somewhere between the dance floor and film score, and this album leans fully into that space. Six years also change the way you listen. You absorb more music, more experiences, more life. I think the album carries traces of all of that, not just stylistically, but emotionally.
 

Dance albums don’t always prioritize front-to-back cohesion the way albums in other genres do, yet you’ve been intentional about framing SYNCHRONICITY as a continuous listening experience. Why was it important for you to structure the album this way?

I’ve always loved albums that feel like a journey rather than a collection of tracks. Even though electronic music often lives in singles and playlists, there’s something powerful about a record that unfolds gradually. One of my favorite albums as a teenager was Welcome Reality by Nero. It had super cinematic moments and had this front-to-back cohesion that really inspired me for this project. 

With SYNCHRONICITY, I thought a lot about pacing where tension builds, where things release, where the listener can breathe. It’s almost like the structure of a DJ set or a film, where each moment changes the emotional context of the next. For me, the goal was that if someone listens from beginning to end, they feel like they’ve traveled somewhere. Not just through different tracks, but through a cohesive emotional arc.

There’s no question about it; you’re not chasing trends. But there does seem to be a growing appetite for this style of dance/electronic music. Do you feel aligned with the current moment in the genre?

I think there’s definitely a shift happening where people want emotional depth alongside energy. Dance music has always had that capacity, but maybe for a while, the focus was more on functionality and optimizing for the dance floor. Now it feels like audiences are open again to records that are a bit more expansive or cinematic while still working in a club context. 

For me, that’s encouraging, but I’ve never really approached music by thinking about where the scene is heading. The only thing I’ve tried to do is follow the sounds that feel inspiring and exciting to me. If that happens to align with where listeners are moving, then that’s a beautiful coincidence.

You’ve been open about the health challenges you’ve faced while your career has been on the rise and about how difficult it was to balance healing with touring. Did this experience change the way you relate to your music or your ambition?

Yeah, I mean, it was insanely challenging having serious health issues, which completely takes the fun out of life. And then trying to balance a hectic schedule with it becomes really testing for my mental health. So, the process of making music and playing live honestly became a bit of a release because while you’re in that flow state, either in the studio being inspired, or on stage feeding off the energy of a crowd, the pain and uncertainty go away for a moment, and you’re left being purely present. It’s really nice, maybe the only thing that kept me going, to be honest.

Prolonged medical uncertainty can really recalibrate your fear and tolerance thresholds, and, in some ways, this industry can be just as unclear and unforgiving. Does its volatility feel different to you after living inside that kind of instability?

Hmm, maybe a little. I think what it does do is make you not take small pleasures for granted anymore. I think becoming more present and truly starting to enjoy the process of everything you do a bit more diffuses the volatility a little. It creates a bit more detachment, I guess, which I think is actually healthy for creativity. You can focus on making the best work you can without being overly consumed by how everything is perceived in the moment.

You’re getting ready to head out on the biggest tour of your career. There’s been such a focus on world-building and immersive visual production in dance/electronic music in recent years, perhaps more broadly now than ever before. How does your live show fit into this landscape?

For me, the live show is really an extension of the emotional world of the music. A lot of the visual language is inspired by cosmic imagery and things that evoke that feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself. 

I’ve always loved performances where the visual element and the music feel inseparable, where they build one atmosphere together. So, the goal with the show isn’t just spectacle, it’s immersion. I want people to feel like they’ve stepped inside the universe of the album for a couple of hours.

In 2025, you shared that your tour at the time was entirely self-funded through the income from your independent music. How did betting on yourself at that scale prepare you for this moment?

It taught me to trust my instincts. It was definitely a risk at the time, but it also proved that the audience was there and that the project could support itself. That experience gave me the confidence to keep investing in the vision, which is what’s allowing the live show to grow now.

What do you want listeners to take from this album?

The idea behind SYNCHRONICITY is that there are these invisible patterns running through life. Moments where things align in ways that feel almost meaningful beyond explanation. Music can tap into that feeling. If someone listens to the album and feels a sense of wonder or feels a little less alone in whatever they’re going through, then the record has done its job.