Meet a man driven wildly by music. A man classically trained, but rewired with his own two hands. A frequent collaborator, occasional curator and consummate “man behind the curtain” now emerging at the front of something yet unnamed. Somewhere between the concert hall and the club you’ll find his haunting liquid soundscapes, born of hip-hop composition, o’er-strung with chant, hinting at some divine unreachable. Meet Son Lux.

For his second album as Son Lux, New York’s Ryan Lott did a very un-Son Lux thing. He recorded We Are Rising in a month -- the shortest month of the year, actually -- while NPR tracked his every move. This, as opposed to the making of his lauded 2008 debut, At War With Walls And Mazes, which he slowly built in complete privacy over nearly three years.

Listening to "We Are Rising", it’s hard to believe the record came together in a rush. “Flickers” offers a paced introduction -- a delicate array of woodwinds, strings, glassy digitalia and synth throb that lifts Lott’s parched quaver into the clouds. Triumphant standout “Rising” follows, bursting in waves of static-smacked keys and choral bliss (Lott and Stith, joined by the Antlers’ Peter Silberman). By the song’s end, it becomes something like the Faint reimagined by Nico Muhly. Stringdriven late album highlight “Let Go” starts spare and eventually builds into a gorgeous surging symphony of sounds both imagined and real.

Perhaps what the album owes most to its odd upbringing is an inherent unpredictability. Lott picks up the guitar for “Leave The Riches,” a thickly haunted piece that pits Everett’s country baritone against Worden’s operatic coo. And “Claws” noisy, fuzz-caked and lumbering, while its predecessor “Chase” is all about the details: violin and trumpet tracing intricate circles around percussion provided by members of Midlake and Mutemath. By the time We Are Rising closes with the chiming, skittering “Rebuild,” Lott has staked claim over an entire universe of sound, expanding the Son Lux oeuvre in exponential terms, almost accidentally, for years to come.