Lau Ro’s Solo Debut Is Coming. Wax Machine’s 2023 Album Shows the Path

Next month, Lau Ro will release his first solo album. It is a turn worth paying attention to, and not just because the Brighton musician has spent years pulling together a wide range of influences into something distinctly his own. Wax Machine’s 2023 album, The Sky Unfurls, The Dance Goes On, still stands as the most direct map to the territory he’s exploring now.

Ro was the driving force behind that record, threading psych, folk, tropicalia, and kosmische touches through songs that never felt crowded or academic. There’s a lightness to the album, a sense that the music was always in motion, shifting from one idea to the next without losing coherence. Those instincts are not easy to teach. They come from genuine curiosity about sound and structure, and they’re all over the Wax Machine LP.

Looking back at it, the album feels less like a band effort and more like a rehearsal for what Ro is doing now. The scope was already there. The songs were compact but never small. The texture was rich but never fussy. That kind of control rarely comes from a first thought. It’s the result of someone who’s been thinking about sound for a long time.

With the solo debut arriving soon, The Sky Unfurls works as a practical reference. It doesn’t tell you exactly what Ro will do next. But it tells you he’s been building toward this for longer than it might seem.