Reciprocity Nexus is closing out 2025 with the release of their new album Sonic Chocolate. The long-running project of Hendrik Kleinsmiede is set to return with its ninth studio album, Sonic Chocolate, a release that not only underscores the project’s creative longevity but also highlights its continued evolution across indie, alternative, and pop-adjacent terrain.
Leaning into a warmer, more immediate palette, Sonic Chocolate presents fourteen tracks that shimmer with pop-tinged vibrancy while staying grounded in thoughtful songwriting. The album moves fluidly between power pop and indie rock, peppered with touches of blues and classic rock ’n’ roll, creating a sound that feels both familiar and freshly energized. It’s an emphatic statement—one that balances melodic accessibility with emotional depth, reaffirming Kleinsmiede’s instinct for crafting songs that resonate beyond the surface.
At its core, Sonic Chocolate is an album about love in all its forms and contradictions. Rather than narrowing the focus, the record expands the idea, tracing love’s many shapes and stages with clarity and intention. Kleinsmiede explains:
“‘Sonic Chocolate’ was deliberately conceived as a collection of only love songs. The reason was threefold: firstly, to explore the many dimensions of love, from classic romantic love to love for one’s children or for people now gone. Secondly, as a homage to the classic, original, ubiquitous subject of pop music, which, of course, is love.
Lastly, in reaction to its predecessor ‘Agnostic Hymns / Secular Psalms’, a concept album on the complex topic of agnosticism. I wanted to write about only one simple emotion, love, which, incidentally, might also comprise the only meaningful answer to the complex questions (about the meaning of life in a possibly godless universe) posed by its predecessor. In this sense, ‘Sonic Chocolate’ can be considered somewhat an answer to, and companion piece, for that record”
That sense of contrast is key. Where Agnostic Hymns / Secular Psalms wrestled with existential uncertainty, Sonic Chocolate responds with emotional directness, choosing feeling over philosophy without sacrificing depth. It’s a confident pivot that feels less like a retreat and more like a resolution.
As the final musical statement from Reciprocity Nexus before the calendar turns, Sonic Chocolate arrives as both a culmination and a bridge, closing out the year on a high note while setting the tone for what lies ahead.
Listen below: