Shots: Trevlad / Lines Of Silence / Euan Dalgarno / Isolated Community / Audio Obscura

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VARIOUS ARTISTS – PUZZLES OF THE PSYCHE

Puzzles Of The Psyche is a 20-track compilation by Trevlad, whose mixes show the same curatorial intricacy that dominates this collection. Informed by the title, and a sleeve which gives me Escher-meets-AI vibes, this is a deep-thinking exploration filled with deep ambient cuts that often lean toward the mysterious. That style is best exemplified by Hy Vyb and Asha Patera, both of whom blend New Age-y reference points with almost noir-ish mystique. Elsewhere, tracks from Arcane Trickster, Oceanographer and Bit Cloudy go for bubbling, immersive ambience, while The Gaye Device breaks ranks and hitches that ambience to a low-slung house style reminiscent of UFOrb-era Orb. The two standouts, for this writer, both come in upper-case: HDRF’s long, elaborate and dramatic ‘Chronofracture 4’ and BUNKR’s supremely melancholic futurism on ‘Circling The Monolith’. Released March 26 2026.

https://trevlad.bandcamp.com/album/puzzles-of-the-psyche

LINES OF SILENCE – LINES IN OPPOSITION!

The new album from Lines Of Silence (David Little, Dave Clarkson and Andrea Parra) is perhaps one of the most arresting and attention-grabbing albums I’ve heard this year. Opener ‘Wolf’ sets the pace, Featuring blisteringly hot guitar layers, ebbing / flowing synth sweep and a solid motorik beat, coming to rest somewhere in the liminal space between Neu! and The Modern Lovers, via the space rock of Hawkwind and Appliance. I’m not usually one for making comparisons with other artists, as I always find that kinda lazy, but I’ve just dropped four bands into a comment about one single track, so I might as well carry on. I’m pretty sure those comparisons are way, way off here, but ‘Come With Us (If You Want To…)’ sounds like System 7 covering incidental music from Miami Vice, with a squelchy bassline intertwining itself around sinewy, entrancing arpeggios. The second half of the album consists of more intentionally psychedelic pieces, generally without beats. The transcendent, euphoric effect is the same, just at a more languid pace. And yet there is implied momentum here, a sense of latency and expectation, of flying through wormholes in your consciousness and falling through the bottom of the universe. Released May 8 2026.

https://linesofsilenceband.bandcamp.com/album/lines-in-opposition

EUAN DALGARNO – CLIFF WORKSHOP

Cliff Workshop was composed by Edinburgh electronic musician Euan Dalgarno following an accident. Its creation became an integral part of his healing, both physically and also mentally. In his notes for the album, he talks openly about these pieces having a consciously reassuring tone. That tone is most evident on ‘The Bealach’, where a spiralling central melody encircles you with a powerfully emotive resonance, its intense grip only heightened by wavering voices and euphoric textures. Elsewhere, ‘Rockethaus’ emerges uncertainly from quiet, ruminative ambience, before coalescing into a devastating string crescendo, while ‘Jackson Pollock’ simulates the chaos and drama of the painter’s canvasses, with broad synth sweeps and discordant violins providing an analogue to Dalgarno’s unsettled mind amid his recovery. Released May 15 2026 by Bytes.

https://euandalgarno.bandcamp.com/album/cliff-workshop

ISOLATED COMMUNITY – NORTHUMBERLAND PILLBOX ODYSSEY

In 2020, while temporarily living in Cornwall, I spent some time on the beach at Sennen. I’d been there countless times but for some reason had never spied the small, abandoned concrete military structure halfway up the hill behind the wide expanse of sand. Feeling inquisitive, I took myself up there to have a look. It was eerie and strange. Its roof had collapsed and it was filled with rubbish, needles and the remnants of a small fire. Where once it might have been part of an earnest effort to keep our shores safe from enemy invasion, it was now nothing more than a concrete waste basket. I made some field recordings, some of which may have ended up in Audio Obscura’s The Lost Weekend.

The latest release from Newcastle’s Isolated Community is concerned with the many such vestigial military structures that can be found across Northumberland. The duo of Richard and Rachael have an unerring knack for creating impressionistic sonic pieces from architectural inputs, and their focus here on these ‘pillboxes’ gives the collection an often dark and sinister vibe.

Some of the best moments appear in a sequence of tracks occupying the centre of the album, ‘Budle Bay: Gun Battery’, ‘Acklington: ‘Type22’ Pillbox’ and ‘Hemscott Hill: ‘Cottage’ Pillbox’. ‘Budle Bay’ floats on ghostly wraiths of spooky textures, offset by a wavering, mysterious melody, barely audible off in the distance, and a churning, spinning sound that sounds mechanical and dangerous. On ‘Acklington…’ we hear a wonky melody that shimmers over turbulent white noise and static; the melody sounds like it should belong at an afternoon tea dance for war veterans, only it is skewed and messy, like time and space have been cataclysmically disrupted by some catastrophic event. Finally, on ‘Hemscott Hill’ we hear a skeletal beat, a synth that whines like a siren, and a low vocal texture that sounds like ominous chanting. An imaginative, haunted exploration of our wartime past. Released May 22 2026 by Northumberland Audio Capture.

https://isolatedcommunity.bandcamp.com/album/northumberland-pillbox-odyssey

AUDIO OBSCURA – DREAM STATES

The concept behind the latest album from Neil Stringfellow arose while watching an interview with Duke Ellington. He was asked by the interviewer about playing piano, to which the Duke retorts that it isn’t playing, “this is dreaming”. In what feels like a rejected card from the Oblique Strategies deck, Stringfellow found himself pondering what a dreaming piano might sound like. This album is the response to that enquiry.

It is a collection somewhat removed from some of the earlier Audio Obscura albums, largely because of the emphasis on weaving beatific piano around complex rhythms and electronic impulses. It has a sinewy connection to the series of albums that commented on environmental change, given that Stringfellow composed the pieces at night during the extreme UK heatwaves of 2025, but for the most part this feels like he is breaking new musical ground.

I always find it hard to isolate highlights on Audio Obscura albums. Stringfellow’s approach to composition always creates an even musical flow state where individual pieces only ever feel like part of a complete whole. Nevertheless, ‘Is It True That We Only Ever Dream In Black And White’ stands out, beginning with the voice of his son, Arlo (“for extra pocket money”), where Stringfellow attaches contemplative piano to a resonant bass pulse; when the piano drops out, you hear a track filled with low-level turbulence and clusters of restless noise. The sonic framework of ‘People Say I’m A Dreamer’ consists of delicate piano, heat-haze textures, scratchy electronic patches and a beat that shuffles along like it belongs on an ambient trip-hop cut from 1994.

I remember the heatwaves of 2025. They sucked. I couldn’t sleep a wink, and, according to his notes, neither could Stringfellow. Whereas I just lay in bed desperately seeking some sleep, trying not to agitatedly toss and turn to find a comfortable position, he used the time to make art. The result is a uniquely atmospheric album, dreamily composed in the unsettling quiet of sleeplessness. Released June 12 2026.

https://audioobscura.bandcamp.com/album/dream-states

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Shots: Audio Obscura / Marco Avitabile / Holdec / Rupert Lally

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AUDIO OBSCURA – ÉLIANE RADIGUE TRIBUTE

Norfolk-based Neil Stringfellow (Audio Obscura) made this tribute to French electronic music pioneer available upon her sad passing earlier this year. At the time she left us, I had been making enquiries about interviewing her for Electronic Sound, but was well aware that her appetite to do such an interview as she approached her mid-nineties was remote. These two long-form pieces were only available briefly, and only accessible to Stringfellow’s Bandcamp subscribers. In the message that accompanied their release, he spoke about how inspirational Radigue was to him (after a work colleague handed him a CDr of her music in 2004), and how her passing prompted him to spontaneously create these pieces from the same source sounds. They lean into Radigue’s trademark soft drone style; deeply-layered, consciously-structured, never static, always moving, forever evolving (yet ever-so-gently). The first piece focuses its attention on the drones alone, while the second piece adds an emotive, exceptionally sparse piano motif that delivers a melodic offset to the undulating long tones that sit beneath it. A poignant and reverential tribute. Released February 26 2026.

MACRO AVITABILE – NOW TRANSITIONING

I was fortunate enough to hear this album a long time before it was released, and consequently I feel highly connected to the latest collection from Italian guitarist Marco Avitabile. Fully improvised, it finds Avitabile at his most introspective and thoughtful, his playing delivered under the weight of profound emotions. On the first piece, ‘Waiting For Something Good To Happen’, he introduces a melodic motif which appears, in often dislocated form, throughout the pieces here. In its opening appearance, it is presented as anticipatory and expectant but also realistic, as if suggesting that he knows the path ahead if far from certain. So it is that on ‘Broke Up And Cried’, the melody is subjected to angry distortion that renders it almost unrecognisable. The centrepiece of this collection is ‘Let The Children Play!’, which is languid and serene, evoking the carefree lives we enjoy as children, while a sudden pivot into graceful, elegiac textures is nothing short of devastating. Released March 20 2026

https://marcoavitabile.bandcamp.com/album/now-transitioning

 

HOLODEC – TRU FOLK

On first listen, the new album from LA-based Holodec (aka Jieh) is a collection of drifting, beat-less gravity-free ambient pieces, rich in textural tapestries and often fleetingly melodic. In his description of TRU FOLK, Jieh makes a seasoned case for how these pieces connect to folk music, but it is not obvious, at least initially, how that link manifests itself. Each of these pieces incorporates field recordings made in various locations across California and Taiwan. Most ambient music that embraces field recordings as situational devices goes for naturalistic sounds, and there is definitely some of that in evidence here, particularly on the meditative ‘quiet water, loud water’.

Jieh’s field recording focus is more squarely placed on overheard conversations, snatches of dialogue, the naïve joy of children playing, disagreements and idle chit-chat, all dropped in almost indiscriminately alongside his soft, enveloping compositions. When your attention rests on these human interactions, that’s when Jieh’s idiosyncratic view of this being a uniquely progressive and electronic form of folk music makes sense. Folk music has always been about the stories of people, and that’s ultimately what we realise we are hearing here. Released April 17 2026 by Phantom Limb.

https://holodec.bandcamp.com/album/tru-folk

RUPERT LALLY – WARM COMPUTERS

 I’ve known Swiss-based electronic composer Rupert Lally for a long time now. I’ve followed his music, I’ve interviewed him, I’ve collaborated with him and I’ve released two of his albums through Mortality Tables. I like to think I’ve got a pretty good handle on his music. Warm Computers, his latest release, proves that familiarity doesn’t always afford a complete understanding of where an artist might decide to take their music.

 This is Lally at his most objectively and surprisingly rhythmic, eschewing his recent forays into modular improvisation in favour of an electronic dance music which leans into a sort of late-80s / early-90s vibe. ‘You Gotta Be Respectful’ drills into a defiant electro style, filled with hard-hitting rhythms and a wild, attention-grabbing bass line. Elsewhere, Lally hitches resolute beats to emotive textures and the effortless melodic nous which his years spent researching overlooked film soundtracks has informed. ‘Corrupted’ has a dirty, post-hardcore edge, while ‘Selected Ambient Postcard’ nods toward the Aphex Twin album of a similar name. An exciting departure by Lally toward an under-explored zone in his music that I truly hope he continues to investigate. Released May 1 2026.

https://rupertlally.bandcamp.com/album/warm-computers

Various Artists – Celebrating The Bat Chapters 1 & 2

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The Dustopian Frequencies imprint has developed an enviable knack for curating themed compilations. I most recently wrote about Insects, which was focused, as its name deftly implies, on artists contributing sound works inspired by the imagined stories of specific insects. Split over two volumes, Celebrating The Bat does something similar, only this time the label’s curatorial gaze is trained on bats.

It is a vast and, if I’m honest, initially daunting project. There are 44 artists here, making this a mammoth set of volumes to work through, filled with familiar names and many that have totally passed me by. It is certainly worth the effort to listen to this all, however. The first volume (Darkness Falls) was intended to evoke the idea of the sun slowly setting, ushering bats out from their daytime hiding places into the darkening skies, while the second compilation (Into The Night) seeks to document bats as they dominate the night sky, hard at work hunting, right through to daybreak.

On the first volume, highlights include tracks by HDRF, MikeKSmith, Giants Of Discovery, Justice, Exit Chamber, Rawtrachs, Lukas Fraktal, PG Warren, Moston Priory and Ali O’May. There is a sense of accumulating darkness in these pieces. Across the first volume you hear lots of drones, grim tones and skittish, randomised sounds that evoke both the sonar communication methods of the bats, and also the dizzying way in which they skim, flip and perform head scratching acrobatic manoeuvres rapidly through the skies. Two tracks which occupy a determinedly different space come from Foster Neville, whose ‘Phoebus Denied’ offers a brief and mournful theremin elegy fringed by buzzing, metallic sounds, and Pocket Dimension, whose ‘Lady Jacaume Of Bayonne’ presents a sparse post-punk electronic cut that would have found a welcome place in the early Mute or Rough Trade catalogues.

Where the first volume feels somewhat brooding and sinister, the second feels, in some ways, more obviously celebratory. Where some tracks approach the bat’s mystique and mystery, there is a sense of joy in a track like 30 Door Key’s ‘Bat(Amax)’ which springs and hops along on wonky rhythms and melodies, while the spoken word contributions on Autumna’s ‘Interceptor’ makes the point that most experienced aerobatic pilots would love to pull off the moves that bats are able to perform so effortlessly. These tracks join other superb pieces by Warmfield, Hexham Wolf, svefn, The Music Liberation Front Sweden, M. Francisco, Trevlad, Scholars Of The Peak and Bernard Grancher.

Postscript

I have two bats which used to visit our garden but who I didn’t see at all in 2025. They reappeared a few weeks ago when we enjoyed a brief run of evenings that were blessed by entirely clear skies.

On one weekend day during that period, the temperatures had been so unseasonably warm that we’d been able to hang some washing on the line. In the evening, I went outside to get the clothes in just as the pair of bats started their elliptical dances right above my head. It was thrilling to watch and to feel a brief but perceptible rush of air from frantically-beating wings, sometimes right by my ear.

I went into the lounge and gushed about what had happened to my youngest daughter, who looked uncomfortable and slightly circumspect – fearful, almost. In some ways, the two sets of very different reactions – my amazement and my daughter’s discomfort – sum up the two sides of this collection; the dark and the light. It makes me think that bats have been given a pretty bad reputation, mostly thanks to Dracula, The Lost Boys and countless other films derived from Bram Stoker’s root idea.

What Dustopian Frequencies have achieved here, in a highly maximalist way, is to rescue the industrious bat from mischaracterisation. Celebrating The Bat offers, across 44 absorbing, evocative and smartly-executed tracks, a reverential celebration of these wonderful and frequently misunderstood creatures.

Celebrating The Bat Chapter 1: Darkness Falls was released April 2 2026. Celebrating The Bat Chapter 2: Into The Night was released April 17 2026. Both releases were issued by Dustopian Frequencies.

Shameless Plug: The Music Liberation Front Sweden released ‘Even Though It Was The Blink Of An Eye, I’m Sorry For What We Have Become’ as part of The Impermanence Project, part of my Mortality Tables collaborative endeavour. It can be found here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Shots: Xuma / Asher Levitas & Margaret Fielder McGinnis / Brass Clouds, Fog Net & Volcanic Pinnacles / Hiro Ama / Pas Musique

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XUMA – FREE BETTY

‘Free Betty’ is a protest song by Xuma, the Brighton duo duo of Harriett and Chris Robbins Kennish, whose debut album Jasmine I wrote about two years ago. The focus of their ire here is on the jailing of one Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, imprisoned in squalid conditions in Morocco for wearing a slogan t-shirt – in London, where the last time I checked we still enjoyed freedom of speech and expression – that supported two women sentenced to death in Iran for being lesbians. ‘Free Betty’ contains four mixes of the track, fronted by Harriett Robbins Kennish’s angular, punky vocals, the mixes all pack their own political punch, ranging from crisp electro to fast-paced minimal techno. You can read more about the Free Betty campaign here. Released January 18 2026.

https://xuma.bandcamp.com/album/free-betty

Shameless Plug #1: Chris Robbins Kennish released ‘Wedding Piano’ under the name Ultrachill as part of Season 3 of my Mortality Tables LIFEFILES project. It can be found here.

ASHER LEVITAS & MARGARET FIELDER MCGINNIS – THROUGH THESE RED WINDOWS

This collaboration between sound artists Asher Levitas and Margaret Fielder McGinnis uses two discrete inputs as the jumping-off points for the four tracks presented here. The first is a series of sculptures by McGinnis which are named after Wallace Sabine (1868 – 1919), a physicist whose pioneering work on acoustics was integrated into the architectural design of the Boston Symphony Hall. The second input is a recurring childhood dream that Levitas experienced, which, when approached as sound sculptures, become textures that range from dreamy and resolved to tangled and impenetrable. These were then played through McGinnis’s sculptures, fringing them with a metallic crackle like a rattling air conditioning unit which gives even the most elegiac tone a sense of deep and complex uncertainty. A remarkable release from these two seasoned artists. Released February 13 2026.

https://asherlevitas.bandcamp.com/album/through-these-red-windows-2

Shameless Plug #2: Asher Levitas released ‘It’s Like Last Time But This Time You’ve Got A Gun’ as part of another Mortality Tables initiative, The Impermanence Project. It can be found here.

BRASS CLOUDS, FOG NET & VOLCANIC PINNACLES – DIVE 2: SONOLUMINESCENCE

It’s hard not to describe the second release from the Bathysphere imprint’s Dive series as immersive. Recorded in a single day by the mysterious Brass Clouds, Fog Net and Volcanic Pinnacles, Dive 2 is part-jazz, part-ambient, part-soundscape and all, well, immersive. We hear unobtrusive, atmospheric field recordings, singing bowl tones, evocative saxophone melodies, and big blocks of floating texture, often all at once. It is a highly emotional suite, sidestepping specific classification. The inquisitive piano melodies, fluid synth-brass notes and fluttering electronics of ‘Spectral Visions’ combine together to make one of the album’s emotive highlights, its discernible instrumentation briefly collapsing into a dense web of enveloping drones. ‘Phosphor Signals’ trawls through rich, bass-heavy low-end thanks to a combination of sonorous sax and heavy synths, though which poke a joyful melodic pairing of chiming percussion and piano. Immersive, like I already said (twice). Released February 26 2026 by Bathysphere.

https://bathysphererecords.bandcamp.com/album/dive-2-sonoluminescence

HIRO AMA – BOOSTER PACK

In 2024, I reviewed Japan-born, London-based Hiro Ama’s Music For Peace And Harmony for Electronic Sound. This seems to happen to me increasingly rarely these days, but it is an album that I returned to countless times after the review was written. Its gentle, mellifluous atmospherics left a real impression on me, and I found myself playing it during moments where things were getting on top of me or I felt anxious. Honesty, it’s a beautiful collection. Please do check it out. The Hiro Ama of Booster Pack is very different. This is music designed to move your feet, not soothe your troubled soul. In fact, the only trace of the Ama from Music For Peace And Harmony I can find is on ‘Cloud 9’, where a wonky melody briefly offers a glimpse of the lightness of spirit that coloured his 2024 album. The EP proves Ama to be a highly dexterous and unpredictable producer. The intense ‘Lava’ belongs in a Moby rave DJ set from 1992, with a savage, almost EBM bass line. Opener ‘Booster’ is the highlight, occupying a euphoric (but often skewed) deep house zone that, like the spiritual side he showed on Music For Peace And Harmony, Ama makes entirely his own. Released April 10 2026 by PRAH.

https://hiroama.bandcamp.com/album/booster-pack-ep

PAS MUSIQUE – 8 PHRASES

Hot on the heels of the solo Pas Musique performance by founding member Robert Pepper at the Pictor Gallery in New York last week, there’s a new album out this week. 8 Phrases is the soundtrack to a film comprising eight short segments, and finds the trio of Pepper, Michael Durek and Jon Worthley returning to the instant composition / filming approach they used between 2008 and 2011. The full film can be found here. ‘Whisper’ occupies the dead centre of this collection, finding them intoning a nursery rhyme I’d forgotten all about over a sound bed of swirling, slightly discordant electronics doused in phasing, fluctuating reverb. The words are delivered in a low, conspiratorial whisper which imbues them with a grim sense of discomfort and unease, not dissimilar to how The Residents often usher the familiar toward the nightmarish. Elsewhere, ‘Inside A Clock’ fuses a pulsating, restless low-end with murky, shrouded voices from which emerges a dense sequence of unpredictable sounds. ‘Garden Echo’ might have the most beatific title of all of these pieces but it is also one of the collection’s darkest moments, as a polite cloud of pretty textures gets hitched to a dirty, faltering rhythm, accompanied by urgent sirens, and grubby blocks of distorted noise. Released April 24 2026.

https://pasmusique.bandcamp.com/album/8-phrases

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Pas Musique / onewayness : Ambient Chaos (Pictor Gallery, New York April 17 2026)

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Pas Musique

Everything up to now is just a prologue.

A gallery just out of the shadow of the High Line. Pictures from Michael Zenreich’s LIFESTILL series line the walls. Initially unclear until studied correctly, each one seems to contain processed photographs of fruit overlaid with resolute grid lines.

Against a backdrop of old video footage of preserved childhood memories, onewayness (Adam Holquist) offers a dreamy suite of delicate piano motifs offset by occasional fleeting sonic interventions, each successive element quietly interfacing with the melodies. It is a subtle evocation of the passing of time, every isolated note feeling like a grain of sand being drawn inexorably to the bottom half of a glass timer.

Robert Pepper‘s solo Pas Musique set occupied a noisier, more abrasive ambient zone. We hear looped sounds that become inadvertent rhythms, interspersed with brief vocal sounds that blur rapidly into Pepper’s rich soundscape. There are moments where what sounds like a Tibetan singing bowl is subjected to heavy dub processing until it reaches a point of total unrecognisability. A video shows an inchoate image of either rapidly swirling water or a medical camera making a journey through a body, creating an unsettling, unswerving visual presence that mirrors Pepper’s continually oscillating, restless, discordant tapestries.

There is a palpable tension here. Rhythms try to assert themselves only to be suppressed. A TV announcers words are jumbled into nonsense. Sweet sounds rapidly become nightmarish.

That ongoing tension across Pepper’s thirty-minute set mirrors Zenreich’s pictures and their uncomfortable relationship between organic objects and the authoritarian, domineering power of the grid.

Pas Musique will release 8 Phases on April 24 2026. With thanks to John.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

The Doomed Bird Of Providence – Metoric Heralds Of Danger

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I have an awkward relationship with graphic scores. On the one hand, I can’t read music, so the idea of an alternative way of providing instruction to musicians that doesn’t use traditional notation really appeals to me. On the other hand, I find them utterly baffling. I can’t ever figure out what they’re trying to convey, whereas sheet music has at least a sense of order (unless you’ve ever tried to decipher one of Charles Ives’s scores). All of this is irrelevant because I can neither read music nor play an instrument anyway, though I find it pretty easy to follow the score for John Cage’s 4’33”…

I mention all of this because the fifth album from the London-based The Doomed Bird Of Providence makes use of an especially bewildering graphic score. “The scores are circular in shape,” writes Mark Kluzek (accordion, bass, glockenspiel, percussion). “They are split into rings which are the stages of the composition. The performer moves from the centre, outwards, through each ring and responds to the symbols assigned to them. The symbols are prompts suggesting a certain way of playing…”

I’ve followed this collective for a number of years. I’ve always found their semi-improvised music leans into a sort of sea-shanty style mournfulness, and in fact the first album of theirs I ever wrote about was inspired by stories from the sea. The jumping off point for Meteoric Heralds Of Danger was an 1874 prison novel by Australian novelist Marcus Clarke, For The Term Of His Natural Life. All the titles contain a nautical reference reflecting the fact that Clarke’s book details the horrendous treatment of a man transported by boat to Australia, his punishment for having been accused of committing a crime.

There is a curious sense of finality and hopelessness to these pieces, reflecting the fate of a prisoner doomed to spend the rest of his days in a penal colony. There are, however, moments of somewhat muted joy. The recurring violin and viola refrains by Joolie Wood and Rachel Laurence on ‘Darkly Rolling Waves Flashed Fire’ and the otherwise apocalyptic title track are two such relatively hopeful moments. Kluzek’s stirring Parisian bridge musician accordion on ‘A Long Low Line On The Distant Horizon’ is another.

There are four long-ish improvisations using the visual scores here, augmented by four shorter composed pieces. Without watching the musicians interpret the score in the studio, you’d be hard-pressed to know which was which apart from the lengths. Taken as a whole, Meteoric Heralds Of Danger is a remarkable collection, and exactly what I’d expect from them.

Meteoric Heralds Of Danger by The Doomed Bird Of Providence was released March 20 2026. With thanks to Mark.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Xqui – Laying A Pipeline / Nocturnal Drift

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Two new releases from the anonymous and prolific Xqui highlight two different sides to the artist behind the mask – the noisy fan of processed found sound, and someone drawn to more melodic concerns.

Laying A Pipeline seems fully in thrall to Depeche Mode’s 1983 album, and explores Xqui’s fascination with field recordings. The primary source material for this, hence the nod to Construction Time Again, was a building site on the industrial estate where the mysterious Xqui holds down his day job (presumably in his mask, much to the amusement of his co-workers).

It’s an homage, of sorts, to the Depeche album, but also to the overall act of opportunistically making field recordings and then manipulating them into new shapes which render their source fairly unknowable. I guess that’s allegorical to what happens on a building site, where an empty space is transformed into something with definition and purpose.

‘Service Dust’ is the standout here, for no other reason than it shows Xqui at his manipulative best, building a weird and alien sound world out of heavily-disguised voices and what sounds like hissing steam from a dystopian Metropolis factory production line. If this had been the 1960s, someone would probably had this banned for containing subversive, mind-controlling messages.

And then there’s Nocturnal Drift, for which I was going to use the adjective ‘noir’ because of its evocative, Lost Highway-esque sleeve photography. Only that was me being lazy and I hadn’t even heard the album at that point (yeah, yeah – never judge a book by its cover etc etc). Instead, this finds Xqui in the same general vicinity of his Vince Clarke-tipped Hymns album.

Quite where Xqui sourced the sounds from here is, like everything he does, somewhat unclear, however it is presented as a melodic, often classically-minded suite, occasionally joyful and frequently contemplative. The centrepiece is ‘Progressive Modernism’, which runs for an epic 28 minutes and, despite very little fluctuation in its short looped sound, never seems to run out of steam. It rather reminds me of the Philip Glass Buddha Box I zoned out to during the work-from-home-torture of the 2020 lockdown.

It also reminds me of hours spent staring at Mark Rothko’s bleak Four Seasons series of paintings at Tate Modern until they moved them someplace else. Like Rothko’s impenetrably dark canvases, the conceit is the level of detail that reveals itself under close examination and intense focus. The pace of ‘Progressive Modernism’ may be hesitatingly slow, but there is extreme restlessness and volatility in its myriad surrounding textures.

I hate to call this profound, as that might give Xqui a big head. In turn, that would require him to buy a bigger mask. In spite of those concerns, I can think of no better or more fitting word to describe Nocturnal Drift.

Laying A Pipeline was released April 3 2026 by Eustress Tapes. Nocturnal Drift will be self-released on April 30 2026 through xqui.bandcamp.com

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Rupert Lally – Norden

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Remember that TV show It’ll Be Alright On The Night? It was hosted by a guy called Denis Norden, who would introduce gaffes and outtakes while holding a clipboard, looking less like a veteran TV presenter and more like a safety inspector in a factory. Well, this album by Switzerland-based sound artist Rupert Lally is a tribute to him.

Only kidding. It isn’t, though it would be kinda fun if it was. But it is a tribute – of sorts – to the Nord Modular G1 synth, which Lally used to create this album. It consists of five long tracks which find Lally in full-on, long-form experimental electronic territory. I’ve followed Lally’s work for at least a decade now, and it’s really interesting to hear him venture down this path.

There’s a sense of restraint, but also freedom, in these pieces. It’s like he’s symbiotically interfaced himself with the machine, building patches that rely on repetitions, subtle shifts in tone and slowly-evolving layered development. Outwardly minimalistic, each of these five pieces is actually a rich stew of interlacing ideas where a lot happens if you only listen closely enough.

Each piece here occupies its own unique sound world, but ‘Nord D’ is my personal favourite, specifically for the nostalgia its core bass refrain gives me for Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which runs for the first four minutes until a hesitant, oscillating melody ushers in the track’s discrete and mesmerising changes. And then there’s ‘Nord E’, a 27-minute epic that feels like a 1970s synth music experiment that has existed for fifty years in a undiscovered time capsule buried in Don Buchla’s back yard, all white noise percussion, pointillistic tonal sprinkles and dubby echoes.

Norden is an album with many such moments to explore, occupying a creative zone that I’d really like to hear Lally leaning into more – with or without a clipboard.

https://rupertlally.bandcamp.com/album/norden

Norden by Rupert Lally was released March 6 2026.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Various Artists – Insects

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A warning: if you’re the kind of person that massively freaks out at the insect-based challenges on shows like I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here or The Challenge, Insects is not the compilation album for you. Containing 12 tracks each inspired by insects, if you’re even remotely scared of humming, buzzing, flapping or the amplified sound of insectoid limbs scurrying across a kitchen surface, this is likely to send you into a complete panic. For everyone else, this is a sharply-executed curatorial exercise by the always-remarkable Dustopian Frequencies imprint.

Key tracks for this reviewer include ‘Anopheles Genus Takeover’ by BMH (WCR’s Kate Bosworth and Matt Jetten) which has the sinister nihilism of an imaginary soundtrack to Iain Banks’ ‘The Wasp Factory’, until Bosworth issues the line “There are no tin openers anymore,” which is a trademark bit of wry humour I’ve come to look for in BMH’s savagely inventive music. Dave Clarkson’s squelchy techno banger ‘Hive Mind’ is another, providing further evidence of an alchemical skill that Clarkson has for turning pretty much any sound – toys, sweets, fairground rides, caves – into electronic music gold, in this case imagining a swarm of killer bees descending on an illegal outdoor rave.

At the other extreme, Linear North’s beetling, sub-bass-heavy ‘Brains Nor Backbone’ has a weird mournfulness and sensitivity toward the insect population, with phrasing that pivots on a quote nodding in the direction of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

A recurring memory kept popping into my head while writing this. It was of being in a room in London’s Natural History Museum when my daughters were very small, a curator pulling out drawer after drawer of glass topped boxes, each containing a selection of different insects. This compilation is a lot like being back in that room, only each successive display case is accompanied by a vivid, visceral and very occasionally panic-inducing soundscape.

Insects was released January 23 2026 by Dustopian Frequencies.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.

Various Artists – Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1

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Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1 collates 13 tracks from artists either based in, or with links to, the Gulf region, and was compiled by VCUarts Quatar’s Erika Tsuchiya.

The album employs a wide angle lens as it surveys the sound art spectrum. We hear whispy, euphoric vocals on Ghayda Abdujalil’s sparse ‘Fast-paced Life’. We hear modernist, leftfield electronic pop on Khulafi’s ‘Touch Sand!’. We observe processed sound and field recording excursions on Toni’s evocative ‘Caught In A Sandstorm’, where you can almost feel the desert wind blasting your skin, and Sam Nester’s watery ‘Field Notes’. We hear playful, noisy, disruptive sounds from a train journey on TuaregBeats’ ‘Al Wakra Metro Station’. (I played the latter while on my commute home in England, and the interjection of train announcements on TuaregBeats’ track left me feeling utterly confused as to where I actually was.)

We also hear dark ambience on Salfeya Alblooshi’s ‘E-waste Contaminant’, which carries, on one level, a soundtrack-friendly brooding sense of threat and danger; on another level, it has a fragility, a barely-there lightness that recalls the near-silence of Thomas Köner. Its counterpart comes in the form of the dreamy ‘The Shand’ by WYWY, whose central melodic refrain and breathy vocal feel like they could have found a comfortable place tracking a scene of emotional uncertainty in Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader’s The Canyons.

Tsuchiya appears her twice, under her 3R1K4 alias. ‘Compound’ clusters tinkly, bell-like notes and a 1990s Warp electronica sensibility before offering up a savage, stuttering bass shape that creates the notion of the track suddenly lurching into a blistering rage banger. That latency informs a pulse-quickening feeling of tension and drama which ultimately dissipates rapidly into gentle vocal loops and soft ambience. Her collaboration with mourad, ‘Sunrise Rain’, which closes the collection, leans more prominently into that ephemeral, textural sound, offering soft, shimmering notes alongside a field recording of a relentless, noisy rain shower.

A carefully curated and engaging collection of varied sounds and inventive ideas.

Ephemeral Sounds Of The Gulf – Edition 1 was released February 7 2026 through Ephemera Records

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.