New album: horror vacui

My new album horror vacui is out now and can be heard on bandcamp, SoundCloud and all the major steaming sites (and also all the minor ones...)

The album was conceived as an emotional response to the often overwhelming barrage of sonic intrusions I felt whilst visiting Europe in the summer of 2024.

Field recordings have been sliced, diced, mangled and rearranged. The everyday background drones and the hiss of capitalist activity are brought to the fore and given a new emphasis. They reveal how we are smothered in sounds we cannot control.

The field recordings were made in The Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and at sea in the summer of 2024. Manipulations, slicing, dicing and improvised overlaid instrumentation made in Suffolk between September 2024 and April 2025

Brutally mastered by John Wrawe at the Birdhouse

Some of the sounds used include:

Cows, birds and people in a milking barn

A contact mic attached to a wind chime constructed from collected junk

Man whistling in a launderette as his washing machine enters its final spin cycle

The hubbub of breakfast in a passenger ferry restaurant

Boat moorings creaking as a cargo barge passes by the village of Teroele in the Netherlands

Rain beating against a tent in Belgium

Voices inside a Dutch cafeteria

The rhythms of an old mangle being operated

The drone of a passenger ferry at night whilst the passengers sleep

Contact microphones attached to a metal table

The squeal of a subway train braking system

Tractors clearing goose droppings from a man-made beach