In the late ’70s, the R&B subgenre known as quiet storm gave us what I like to call “Sunday music.” Albums from Smokey Robinson (whose 1975 album The Quiet Storm inspired an intern at Washington, D.C., station WHUR-FM to coin the term), Anita Baker, and Luther Vandross produced soulful music to play in a restful house. Flowing across bright piano chords, silky percussion, and vocals that sound like they’re reverberating through wooden pews, the songs blanket their environment with waves of nostalgic calm that still vibrate with effusive yearning. When Brian Eno pioneered another sedate genre, ambient, with Ambient 1: Music for Airports in 1978, the effect was similar, but the tranquil style was meant to be so unobtrusive that it was only perceptible if you decided to think about it.

Since Space Afrika threaded outtakes of Black life through fuzzy loops on the 2020 mixtape hybtwibt?, the British duo has made sure its ambient music doesn’t pass by unnoticed. Six years later, their second album, Quiet Storm, is no less disruptive. It originally came into the world as the score for the Valentin Noujaïm-directed short film Opera Omnia, which follows two Black teenagers as they roam the night streets of Manchester; even without the film’s accompanying cityscapes, the music has more in common with quiet storm’s emphasis on introspective expression than Eno’s barely there compositions. The operatic vocal pads on “H00D Ambient” are too haunted, RKX Nephew’s dreams on “Ballad for a ‘G’” too big, the gun clicks on “Regards” too loud, to become sonic wallpaper.

Quiet Storm isn’t Space Afrika’s most accessible album; if you’re looking for the deep dub and warm trip-hop loops of earlier records, you might be searching for a while. What’s new here is the album’s heavy classical influence. Space Afrika bring in slow-moving and often gorgeous layers of double bass, violin, harp, saxophone, and piano to exhume the revelry, grief, and chaos of their inner worlds. The first voice you hear on the record is that of opera singer Axekke Fanyo, with a soprano that sounds like it could splinter the bowl of an expensive wine glass. The standout “From the Heart of Knowing” arrives early, where Alto Aria sings above a Bermuda Triangle of sorrow: the squeak of a saxophone, whining bass, and piano that plinks deliriously. The spirituality throughout is imbued with a solemn reverence more Catholic than Baptist.

The ambient music that Space Afrika have worked on over the years exists in the same stratosphere as the field recordings–filled music that Voice Actor and Klein produce, often winding through Burialesque post-dubstep and the staticky downtempo of Actress. Quiet Storm’s field recordings, artful documents of the intimacies of Black life, offer some of the most compelling moments on the album. Like an Arthur Jafa montage, clips of joy and pain flash seamlessly in succession. Space Afrika cram in a cacophony of buzzing voices —“We live up in here,” “I just did a handstand!”—on “We Live. Joy,” before Deuén unravels after a date throughout “If This Is Hell,” breathlessly word-vomiting about capitalism, loneliness, and the impending doom of the ticking clock.

In a world that rewards keeping appearances, Space Afrika makes conveying honesty and vulnerability look easy. This is what makes their music feel sacred, like you need to really listen, even if in some places, I still find myself missing the electronic groove that makes me want to throw on their debut album, Honest Labour, as soon as the sun starts setting at 4 p.m. But when I hear songs like “Regards,” I’m reminded of their strengths. Ascending synths and reversed loops are broken up with a humming chorus and the trickle of rainfall; it’s a quiet beauty that would only make sense in their hands.