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Bassist Pino Palladino and guitarist Blake Mills announce That Wasn't A Dream, a new album out August 2025 on New Deal / Impulse! Records.

That Wasn't A Dream is a statement of intent from two singular musicians. The Grammy-winning Palladino has reshaped what bass can be in popular music, performing with everyone from D’Angelo to Nine Inch Nails, from Erykah Badu to John Mayer. Meanwhile, Grammy-winner and two-time Producer of the Year-nominee Mills is one of today’s most sought-after producers and multi-instrumentalists, known for his work with Alabama Shakes, Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, and Perfume Genius as well as his own acclaimed solo albums.

Pitchfork described the duo's 2021 debut Notes With Attachments as “the sound of consummate collaborators imagining a world where there’s no such thing as a lead performer.” On That Wasn't A Dream, they further dissolve any sense of hierarchy, imbuing their spontaneous compositions with an organic, precisely balanced inner logic. It's quietly audacious, a radical application of their ever-evolving musical chemistry.

To accompany the album announcement, they've shared the video for lead single “Taka,” a progression of instrumental athletics and generous melodic gestures that builds towards an almost kaleidoscopic funk.

That Wasn't a Dream was recorded over a two-month period in the legendary Studio A at Sound City Studios, the room Mills has helmed since 2018. These sessions pulled in collaborators old and new, most notably Sam Gendel, who performed throughout Notes With Attachments and contributed finishing touches for nearly every track on That Wasn’t a Dream. Though ultimately, this record feels like a deepening of the core relationship between Palladino and Mills.

If Notes With Attachments was about creating cohesion out of layered spontaneity, That Wasn’t a Dream finds coherence through restraint. As Palladino explains, some of the compositions grew from harmonically dense ideas that were later reduced to the barest essentials. "It came to light, really, that if we could make something work with the least possible ingredients, space could become the centerpiece," says Palladino.

It was also a chance to innovate; one early Palladino sketch, "What Is Wrong With You?," was Mills’s first opportunity to experiment with the prototype of a new instrument, the fretless baritone sustainer guitar, which Mills helped luthier Duncan Price to develop in 2021, and has since been used on numerous productions, as well as live performances with Joni Mitchell.

"The fretless sustainer can sound almost like a cross between a woodwind, brass, and bowed string instrument,” says Mills. “It’s a tough instrument to control or define.” That undefinable sound, along with a playful approach to minimalism, set the tone for the rest of the album’s writing and recording sessions that would take place almost three years later.

As a result, the music on That Wasn’t A Dream goes from being deceptively intimate to beautifully disordered. It’s music that rewards close listening: subversive but naturalistic, harnessing chaos with intention, unveiling new forms of beauty all along the way. — (via Label)

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On their second record together, Mills and Palladino strip away all excess, building hushed, hypnotic grooves out of bass and fretless baritone guitar, and cushioning it all in copious empty space.

Consider the strange physics of being a passenger: You’re at once in motion and at rest, paradoxically traveling without moving. Scenery hurries by your window. Sometimes your eyes unfocus, scanning a flattened blur of color; other times they might zero in on a road sign or a single leaf, following it out of frame. When you arrive, it’s as if time and space are just behind your shoulder, catching up. That’s the feeling of listening to That Wasn’t a Dream, the spacious and surreal new album from Pino Palladino and Blake Mills. Each song achieves stillness through constant movement and resolution through continuous tension. Isolated melodies occasionally blend into a harmonic cloud before separating once again, drifting nebulously yet highly organized.

The jazz duo’s first record, 2021’s Notes With Attachments, mined similar territory, if a bit busier. Its compositions had the brisk motion of a crowded city sidewalk rather than the hazy liminality of a long train ride. Palladino, the 67-year-old Welsh sideman who’s played with D’Angelo, Don Henley, and De La Soul, hooked his basslines around syncopated percussion and legato tones. Mills, a sought-after producer who’s worked with Beck, Fiona Apple, and Alabama Shakes, carefully inserted staccato guitar plucks between the gaps in rhythmic lines. Alongside a who’s who of contemporary jazz musicians, including saxophonist Sam Gendel and drummer Chris Dave, Palladino and Mills constructed wholly new shapes out of interlocking elements.

On That Wasn’t a Dream, they started with similarly complex arrangements but methodically disassembled them, leaving plenty of air between each sound. “If we could make something work with the least possible ingredients, space could become the centerpiece,” Palladino said in a statement. The result is a sparse, enchanting record where time passes circuitously and phrases brush against each other like branches in the wind.

The grooves on Notes With Attachments could be spiky and nonintuitive, locking deeper into place with each additional layer. Here, Palladino and Mills operate with more restraint, patiently allowing a pocket to develop from a small handful of notes. That often means spotlighting the drums for several bars, cyclical patterns settling like a topsheet wafted above a mattress. The first 10 seconds of “What Is Wrong With You” establish its lysergic lurch with a simple combination of quarter-note hi-hats and a gently swinging kick drum. Palladino’s four-note bassline leaves a wide margin between the downbeat and the end of each measure; Mills’ baritone guitar melody slithers into view, smearing the tune together like a gestural painting. Midway through “Taka,” a bubbling stew of electro-funk, the synth and bass drop out completely, leaving a drum-machine sequence and percussion that sounds like clinking wine glasses to churn in place unimpeded.

A large part of the album’s magic comes from its textural palette. Closely recorded acoustic guitars sound like church bells; woodwinds resemble analog keyboards with the noise circuit cranked; human voices are mixed to the fore and kept dry, as if tracked in an anechoic chamber. Mills plays a fretless baritone sustainer guitar, which has an unclassifiable sound somewhere between a muted horn and a bowed bazantar. Gendel’s signature mutated saxophone makes a few appearances, but he also crafts wispy, barely there synth pads and an electronic wind controller patch that mimics a harp. Songs can quickly swing from organic to otherworldly, like on “Somnabulista,” where a third of the way through, a flute and vocal refrain gives way to the uncanny, CGI fusion you’d hear on a Mark Egan record. It’s bewitching; everything you’re hearing is familiar but just slightly off.

The centerpiece of That Wasn’t a Dream is the hallucinatory one-chord stunner “Heat Sink.” A chiming baritone figure reminiscent of Sam Wilkes’ more sentimental moments carries through its entirety, and a single splashy cymbal marks time, keeping each instrument on a loose tether as it explores the outer reaches. The band members (including Palladino’s son Rocco, also on bass) seem both locked in and completely independent, flickering around each other like atomic orbitals. Every few moments, distorted, overdriven melodies overlap and harmonize, resonant frequencies fusing into a softly glowing drone. “Heat Sink” is completely beguiling, a wall of sound that’s equally mesmerizing if admiring its towering totality or scrutinizing every exquisite detail. It feels both longer and shorter than its 14 minutes, a trick that Palladino and Mills pull off on every track on the album; each lyrical passage is an instruction manual for experiencing nonlinear time. That Wasn’t a Dream is music as quantum theory, using the expanse between speakers to pass through dimensions. — (via Pitchfork)

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Label: Impulse!, New Deal Music 
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2025
Genre: Jazz
Style: Modern/Future Jazz

File under: Jazz // Modern/Future Jazz
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