If you’ve paid even the slightest bit of attention to Britain’s indie scene over the past two decades, James Ellis Ford’s name is likely already sitting in the back of your prefrontal cortex. After all, the producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has appeared in the liner notes and credits of just about every major name to spring from the island’s perpetually cresting chamber-pop, alt-rock and nu-disco scenes — Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, Florence + the Machine, Jessie Ware and countless others have all benefited from Ford’s golden studio touch of sleek and playful guitar lines and glammy synthetic low ends.

Then, there are his own projects, Simian Mobile Disco and the Last Shadow Puppets, which span electro-dance, rave rock and cinematic baroque balladry. In short, Ford’s omnivorous approach has long placed him at the forefront of pop music with distinctly artful edges.

Now, with his second solo album, Lost in Another World, Ford has forged a deeply moving electronic triumph. Recorded over a two-week period from a hospital bed at St. Bart’s in London, where Ford was undergoing intense chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia, the record transforms profound medical vulnerability into an elegant alternative reality — a beatific display of emotional resilience and aesthetic restraint.

Departing from the pastoral prog-pop of his 2023 debut, The Hum, this album leans into a suspended, impressionistic electronic landscape. There are no driving rave tempos or gauzy nostalgia here. Instead, Ford creates his own whirling synthesizer language, full of fragile, glassy and patient timbres that bring to mind the closing ambient era of Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Everything is still as pristine and crisp as fans of his production work would come to expect. Yet nothing about Lost in Another World feels sanitized or overtly sentimental. There’s a stubborn optimism coursing through these ruminative, atmospheric musings on mortality, parenthood and cautiously peeking into the future.

The physical vulnerability Ford endured is difficult to comprehend, but the end result is nothing short of astonishing. Where so many might dig into the dark, he carves out a stunning and dignified state — always immaculate, and always bending toward the light.