It’s been a year of ups and downs for New York City dance punk heroes The Rapture. After parting ways with longtime member and co-vocalist Mattie Safer earlier in the year, fans forecast a grim future for the band, but to much delight of local festival goers the band bounced back with a livewire Parklife tour. It would seem as though the band are continuing on this upward path, making inroads on their next studio album, part of which they’ll be recording with Cassius mastermind Philippe Zdar.

The tasty bit of news comes from an interview with local hipster outlet Pedestrian, who got the skinny from Zdar himself, explaining he was approached by the NYC trio off the back of his recent production work for Phoenix and Cut Copy.

“They came to me and said, ‘we loved the Phoenix album and we want to do some new music…will you be able to help us?” The Frenchman went onto explain that he feels the union has taken the band in “a very good direction”. “All the songs are stronger…well the seven or eight they sent me. There’s still a lot of what I loved about the first album on these new tracks and also a lot of new futuristic stuff, so it’s really interesting.”

During inthemix’s interview with the band earlier this year, saxophonist and sytnh-stylist Gabe Andruzzi spoke out about the band’s love of big, bawdy hip hop production from dudes like Timbaland, so perhaps they’ll return to Timbo for the remaining tracks on the as-yet-untitled LP.

We’ll be sure to get a detailed report from Zdar when Cassius hit Australia for their summer festival dates at Field Day, Solar Festival, Better Days and Origin.