Spekulation arrived in the Pacific Northwest a dozen years ago, and immediately fell in with the local jazz scene. Enamored with crafting sample-heavy beats, he turned his mic on that world as a source of raw materials. Soon the artists with which he worked began backing Spekulation live, and his band now tops out at nineteen players. In 2018 Spekulation released The Crossover Event in 2018. The new record is “very much a direct sequel to the first Crossover Event record” says Spekulation. “The album itself is one single narrative, and each song is essentially a scene in that narrative.” In fact, he began the process by drafting a script for a movie, playing off the usual sequel tropes and story arcs of comics-based films – then wrote the record as a soundtrack to that movie. “Each song is its own discrete scene, and different characters have recurring melodic themes throughout those scenes (and recurring themes from first album too)” explains Spekulation.