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First Word Records are proud to bring you 'Penny Ballads', a 5-track EP from Royce Wood Junior.

Royce Wood Junior is a Grammy & Mercury Award-nominated musician, songwriter and record producer from London, currently based in Brighton. As a multi-instrumentalist, he's collaborated with a litany of brilliant artists over the years, such as Jamie Woon, Nao, Disclosure, Jessie Ware, Olivia Dean, Joy Crookes, Jamie Lidell and Jordan Rakei, additionally to touring with the likes of the legendary Thomas Dolby. He's released two acclaimed solo albums to date ('The Ashen Tang' in 2015, and 'No Two Blue Ticks' in 2021).

'Penny Ballads' demonstrates RWJ's varied talents, with a collection of alternative soul compositions, each one as unique as the next. It includes the first two singles, the Poplife-Prince era flavoured 'Go Get Your Money', and the double-time future funk adrenaline shot, 'Clean Up', along with three previously-unreleased tracks. 'Beretta' is low-slung soul funk, beginning with quirky squelchy synths, before the soulful lead vocal of feature artist Lucey Way breezes in to melt everyone's hearts. 'Things' sweeps in next, an infectiously soulful midtempo heavy soul bop, with an instant earwork of a hook, like a modern-day Steely Dan / Doobie Brothers, complete with a head-nodding string section to end the track. The collection concludes on a more melancholy downtempo tip with 'Rolling'; an almost-folktronic anthem, with a key refrain that wouldn't be out of place on a 70's Stevie piece.

RWJ (aka Jim Wood) says of this project… "Back in the 17 and 1800's Troubadours and minstrels would go from Tavern to Tavern selling Penny Ballads, single sheets of music and lyrics written quickly and frivolously to make a quick buck.. It strikes me that we're in a similar phase in the way we value music in 2025. An old Penny Ballad was cheap and dog-eared, ink-smudged, sung aloud by firelight, Now songs live in the digital ether, dissolved in the air, a ghostly breath paid in micro cents. The new era of Penny Balladry is here, and weird.

This EP is a snapshot of my writing over a two year period. Focussed on minimal recording styles, one mic on the drums, generally first or second takes on parts and vocals, I wanted the music to feel like small moments with lyrics that talk about the weird nuances of being alive as a latter stage human on the cusp of the Ai revolution. Culturally so evolved, but physiologically still just a bunch of mammals walking about with primitive fears and needs. Just trying to reconcile it all moment to moment…"

Previous support for Royce's music has included Radio 1's Future Sounds, BBC 6 Music's New Music Fix, Annie Mac, Clara Amfo, Jo Whiley (BBC Radio 2), Mary Anne Hobbs, Jamz Supernova, Tom Robinson, Huw Stephens (BBC 6 Music), Zane Lowe and MistaJam. There have been sessions previously for the likes of Red Bull and press from Huck, Line of Best Fit, Clash, Aesthetica & DIY magazine.

Entirely self-written and self-produced, this EP gives a solid taste of RWJ's talents. A deeply funky diverse set of music from an immensely talented individual.

'Penny Ballads' is due to be released on vinyl & digital, 24th October 2025.

The vinyl version also includes an exclusive additional mix of the first single 'Go Get Your Money'.

Vanbur – artist duo consisting of composers Jessica Jones & Tim Morrish – are releasing their debut album release this autumn. The album scoops up Earthing and my dove, to sleep, made famous by the Netflix show ONE DAY, alongside previous material from their debut EP ‘Human’ including In Cold Light which had a huge TikTok moment around the show’s release. Written over several years, ‘Of Becoming’ reflects a maturing of Vanbur’s sound as they themselves have gone through major life changes and transitions, which are addressed both lyrically and sonically in this impressive body of work. There’s a dreamlike quality to the album, representing the sometimes disorientating dichotomy found in immense change of wistful nostalgia and strength found in adaptation. Recorded at Church Studios with a 12-piece ensemble, the album weaves between lush orchestral heights such as Of Becoming and Friends of Mine and edgier alt-pop bangers such as Strange Kind Of Creature. Jess’ vocals are at times ethereal and textured, and at times lean further into her song-writing sensibilities with their most personal lyrics yet. With the pair’s range and skillset across production and composition fully explored, the album is a triumph of song-writing. The band have worked with filmmaker and Creative Director Matt Houghton on a strong visual aesthetic, from key artwork to narrative promotional films shot on 35mm. With graphic design by Torsten Posselt, the vinyl will have a tactile and natural quality tying in with the analogue feel of the campaign. Vanbur’s debut EP, Human, was released in 2018 and received press coverage in Clash, Ear Milk, Higher Plain etc and was played across BBC 6Music shows. The had their debut performance at the 100 Club and plan to bring a scaled up version to stages in 2026. The follow up remix EP included remixes by Mogwai and Katie Gately, and their music has been placed in hit-shows including One Day (Netflix), The Rising (Sky), Hanna (Prime) and Queens (Nat Geo).

Inhale. Exhale. Remember to breathe. In that rhythm lies the pulse of being - the ancient echo of stars from which we are made. Breathing is the bridge between the inner cosmos and the outer void. When you breathe, you testify to existence itself: "I am." The Moonrover - a child of reason - abandoned on the cold, dead Moon. It does not feel time, know fear, or comprehend solitude. But a human, in its place, would understand: Silence is not emptiness. It is a mirror. And in that mirror arises the question: "If I am alone, and silence is infinite - who hears my breath?" The answer lies in the breath. Each inhale is resistance against entropy. Each exhale is an act of remembrance. To breathe is to remember that you are not just part of the Universe - you are its awakened part. And just as the Moonrover crawls across grey lunar plains, driven by an unknown purpose, so do you move through life, led by an inner light, until you realize: breath is not just life. It is a prayer sent into silence. And if you can hear it - you are alive.

Born from a profound devotion to the piano and a reverence for the organic flow of life, byt’ surprises listeners by presenting "paths of sand", a remarkable creation by Amsterdam-based composer xico, offering sound and soul to those willing to listen beyond the surface.

Through the magic of experimentation, xico captured the fleeting beauty of the muse of improvisation, as described by Nachmakovich, transforming the ephemeral into something lasting. Performances recorded on the same old piano during the 2023 Kaalstaart Festival in the Netherlands have since evolved into a fully realized work. A journey of nearly three years of dedicated silence that began with Telva’s intuitive recognition of xico’s voice, starting with an invitation to her radio show and blossoming into a captivating fascination with what unfolded. This process led to the art of shaping the selected live recordings into a collector’s item, now materialized as a limited edition of 200 pressed vinyl copies, forever remaining as an artistic memento.

Perfectly attuned to the energy of the autumn equinox, paths of sand unfolds as an intimate reflection of music’s ability to hold what cannot be held, to speak what cannot besaid, and to embody what can never be described.

xico is a sound artist and improviser from Ibiza whose work explores the merging point between disruptive and post-natural soundscapes, crafting immersive sonic environments through compositions that unfold like ecosystems.

Encouraged by an understanding of chance as nature’s and awareness' most accessible voice, he focuses on creating generative live-sets with varying degrees of unpredictability. For him, subordinating human intention to nature’s order is a conscious choice, and making art through this lens becomes a statement and a spiritual practice. With his distinctive touch, his compositions resonate with the world in unexpected and profound ways, offering experiences you may never have heard before.

Mit England Screaming kehrt Wreckless Eric zurück zu Songs, die er zwischen 1982 und 1984 schrieb - und die ursprünglich auf dem wenig beachteten Album A Roomful Of Monkeys erschienen. Vierzig Jahre später hat Eric Goulden diese Stücke neu aufgenommen und ihnen die klangliche Tiefe und emotionale Ehrlichkeit verliehen, die sie verdienen. Das Ergebnis ist ein kraftvolles, raues Album, das Vergangenheit und Gegenwart miteinander verbindet. Eric spielt die meisten Instrumente selbst, unterstützt von Sam Shepherd (Drums), Amy Rigby und Marc Valentine (Backing Vocals, Piano) sowie dem Performancekünstler Graham Beck. Die Songs handeln von Drogen, Bankrott, Brautmode, Selbsttäuschung und dem Scheitern - Themen, die Eric mit bissiger Klarheit und schwarzem Humor verarbeitet. England Screaming ist ein musikalischer Befreiungsschlag, der die Reife eines erfahrenen Songwriters mit der Energie seiner frühen Jahre vereint.

Mit England Screaming kehrt Wreckless Eric zurück zu Songs, die er zwischen 1982 und 1984 schrieb - und die ursprünglich auf dem wenig beachteten Album A Roomful Of Monkeys erschienen. Vierzig Jahre später hat Eric Goulden diese Stücke neu aufgenommen und ihnen die klangliche Tiefe und emotionale Ehrlichkeit verliehen, die sie verdienen. Das Ergebnis ist ein kraftvolles, raues Album, das Vergangenheit und Gegenwart miteinander verbindet. Eric spielt die meisten Instrumente selbst, unterstützt von Sam Shepherd (Drums), Amy Rigby und Marc Valentine (Backing Vocals, Piano) sowie dem Performancekünstler Graham Beck. Die Songs handeln von Drogen, Bankrott, Brautmode, Selbsttäuschung und dem Scheitern - Themen, die Eric mit bissiger Klarheit und schwarzem Humor verarbeitet. England Screaming ist ein musikalischer Befreiungsschlag, der die Reife eines erfahrenen Songwriters mit der Energie seiner frühen Jahre vereint.

'Songs and Bodies' is best described as hypnagogic post-rock, an impressionistic blur of dissociated riffs, jazzy rhythms and half-heard voices that casts a beguiling digital silhouette of '90s indie music. The album began as a personal experiment, a question that emerged as Piotr Kurek cast his mind back to the era that birthed bands like Gastr del Sol, Bark Psychosis, Labradford and The Sea and Cake. Curious how this music might sound in today’s cultural climate, he started recording sketches at home on guitar and keyboard, applying the same advanced processing, editing and manipulation techniques that had nourished his last run of albums. Early on, he brought in drummer Mateusz Rychlicki and bassist Wojciech Traczyk, layering their performances into the evolving material. These ideas might have remained in that unvarnished state had Unsound not suggested a live performance of the work in October 2024. Spurred by the invitation, Kurek hardened his resolve, finishing a crumpled, uncanny set of half-songs that extend the chimerical sonic universe of the jazz-inspired 'Smartwoods' and its baroque predecessor 'Peach Blossom'.

Not an exercise in nostalgia, 'Songs and Bodies' is an examination of the '90s and '00s experimental rock canon that isolates its humanity as the world stares down a new technological dawn. At a glance, Kurek's songs are remarkably organic, diaphanous guitar-led meditations embellished with era-specific organ and electric piano vamps, cryptic vocal utterances and dusty drums, but it's all an illusion. Listen a little closer and the wrinkles appear—the robotic, garbled articulations, awkward tempo fluctuations and charming hiccups.

Kurek distills these vulnerabilities and blemishes to present a deeply personal but relatable abstraction of familiar sounds and gestures. It's the closest the composer has come to old-fashioned songwriting, but the end result is the same: an invitation to look beyond the frosted glass of an increasingly digital existence.

»La Traversée« (»The Crossing«) is Matthias Puech’s second album for Hallow Ground and follows up on 2023’s »Mt. Hadamard National Park.« Profoundly inspired by re-reading »The Odyssey,« the French composer, instrument designer, and scholar used a Eurorack modular synthesizer to create four pieces that are by far the most intuitive and emotionally charged in his ever-expanding catalogue. Puech’s masterful command of sound comes to the forefront with even more urgency on this record. A wandering meditation on the human condition, »La Traversée« is an album that is constantly in motion—complex electronic music at its most gripping and evocative.

The foundation for »La Traversée« was laid when Puech prepared a live set for a tour organised in collaboration with Hallow Ground in support of »Mt. Hadamard National Park.« Before writing the first three pieces—»Ennosigaios,« »Polyphármakos,« »Nekuia«—the 18½-minute-long »Ithâké« was composed in near-total isolation in the South of France at the end of 2023. Puech performed the material live several times before taking a step black from it for a while. He revisited the pieces when preparingthem for a release. »I was struck by how the technical process and the intention behind the music had completely vanished from my memory,« he says.

What remained intact, however, was Puech’s association of the material with one of the most influential texts of Western literature. Reading a graphic novel adaptation of »The Odyssey« with his two four-year-olds, he noticed the effect that it had on them and himself. »Its themes of longing, fear of and attraction to the unknown, unresolved quests, and the struggle for control felt topical,« he says. »I was completely taken. Every story ever told seemed contained in this ancient tale; every story I have ever tried to tell as a composer seemed inscribed in this framework.« This also extended to formal motifs such as the repetition of incidents, narrative developments, or dramatic effects that also mark »La Traversée.«

Puech says that he perceived Homer’s writing as musical, »like an old Delta blues or a Renaissance counterpoint,« which inspired his writing process. »With a couple of knobs on my Eurorack system, I could control the unfolding of a story,« he notes. »This made me pass through different emotional statesand led to moments in which everything made sudden sense—when you as an artist get a glimpse atsomething essential, can touch upon something universal.« This shines through »La Traversée,« a wildly imaginative album that is deeply personal while also telling a story far more wide-reaching than that of its creator.

With Processing Music, Dutch composer and electronic musician Casimir Geelhoed offers a compelling meditation on sound transformation as a metaphor for psychological and emotional processing. Operating at the intersection of overstimulation, introspection and fragility, the album unfolds as a deeply immersive and personal exploration — one that invites the listener to inhabit a space of their own projection, memory and reflection.

Rather than imposing a fixed compositional structure, Processing Music follows a bottom-up approach, allowing form to emerge organically from the interaction of sonic materials. Digital signal processing is not used here as a mere technical tool, but as a poetic device: transformation as narrative, delay as memory, distortion as tension. Through slowly eroding loops, gently collapsing textures and shifting layers of timbre and space, Geelhoed crafts a delicate sound world that is charged with friction.

What may at first seem abstract gradually reveals an emotional core. The album evokes the suspended time of a largo, the layering of memory like an excavation, the psychological tension of perceived spatial expansion. These are not literal themes, but associative keys to a music that operates in a distinctly human sonic language.

Emerging from a series of live performances, Processing Music retains a performative sensibility: the music breathes, transforms, and invites attention to nuance. It slowly unfolds a landscape shaped by the subtle interplay between structure and dissolution.

Casimir Geelhoed has presented performances and installations at festivals such as CTM, Sonic Acts, Rewire, Fiber, SPATIAL, and Aural Spaces. He studied computer science, composition, music technology, and sonology in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht.

For his last solo record ‘Through a Room’, Bill Nace shifted his usual saturated guitar sound and added tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, bird calls and the mysterious Japanese taishōgoto. Setting up for the final night of his three day residency at OTO with only the taishōgoto soundchecked, Nace hoped that Parker would arrive with his small soprano as its opposite. “I’ve been interested in state change, you know, playing until there’s a shift in time.” Known for his development of multiphonics to produce a constantly shifting pattern, Evan Parker has evolved an instantly recognizable sound - his work the soprano most distinct. Happily, it was the soprano Evan brought with him and as soon as the two start to play they entwine - taking off in a double helix of keys and reed primed for endless reconfiguration. Space warps under the velocity of playing, the pitch rising unrelentingly. It felt like unending lift off in the room, sheer energy until the last note makes remember your feet have been on the floor the whole time. Total time bending shredding.

–

"They had never played together before. They had never even met each other before this springtime 2024 concert at London’s Café Oto.

Evan Parker, circular breathing maestro of the saxophone, a legend in the universe that is Free Improvisation since the late 1960s and Bill Nace, one of the most intriguing experimental “noise” guitarists of the 1990s/2000s underground scene.

For those of us who have been enamored by the live and documented work of both these gents, this Café Oto duo was a must-hear event. It could have gone anywhere musically and that would have been totally fine. Particularly with Evan having a history of being thrown into a variety of challenging collaborations throughout his career, employing the learned elegance of trust in his own sensitivity to listening, responding, leading, following, sparring, intertwining, dialoguing, creating in the instant and, essentially, dignifying the non-hierarchical grace of chance.

The aesthetics of socialist consideration in Evan Parker’s playing, in his community of expanded and personal technique, for a younger player such as Bill Nace, strikes an exemplary model. This notion of respect would be entirely the reason Nace, when offered a residency at the most critical “new music” room in England, would request to play in duo with Parker.

Bill Nace came to prominence mostly during the apex of experimental music activity in and around Western Massachusetts in the early days of the aughts, with a focus on visual art and free improvisation guitar action. He could be found in the daytime hours, his head hanging down over a notepad, penning fine-tuned illustrations and abstract line drawings, while in the evenings he’d be attending any number of basement noise gigs, many of which he’d be participating in. His guitar style came across as being informed as much as by the physicality of his writing utensils in friction to the page as it was to his hearing and redefining of radical recordings ranging anywhere from the Black Unity Group to Black Flag.

Utilizing various metal files and other small cylindrical objects Bill would allow his guitar and amplifier to be in tandem with the improvisatory movements of his body as the instrument balanced, intentionally and, at times, precariously, upon his lap. The performances came across thrilling and daring and they would be mostly in the context of venues nothing more than a low-ceilinged damp and dank New England basement, a clutch of people hanging onto rusty pipes or sitting up on dilapidated washer/dryer machines, the shards of Bill’s “file guitar” sounds ringing out like the most alive music on Earth.

By the time Bill reached Café Oto in early 2024 he had relocated to Philadelphia all the while releasing a succession of collaborative LPs on his Open Mouth label to present his developing progression of solo and collaborative work. He also would find himself considerably engaged with playing the electric taishōgoto, a keyboard-activated string instrument from Japan which can exist as a one, two, four, five, or six string oblong sound object. Bill’s approach to the taishōgoto would not be too unlike his approach to the traditional electric guitar, though no outboard implements such as files, sticks, and rocks are utilized. The similarity would lie wholly with Bill’s full immersion of high velocity action-playing where, with the taishōgoto, an electric drone beauty occurs. The flurry of sonics and resultant harmonics emanating from the amplifier (which Bill opts to dial into with borderline loud-as fuck volume settings) furthers the meta-mantra properties of the instrument in an astounding display of drone dynamism.

This sound world of Bill’s two-stringed taishōgoto on this Café Oto night worked beautifully with Evan Parker’s improvisatory saxophone conceptions. The duology achieved instant lift off at ground zero only to find it’s eventual finale as if it were organically ordained. Time seemingly morphed from its ancient human construct of control, rendered inconsequential to the torrential transcendence of the room wildly activated by the magic resonance of the multi-directional pan-spatial sonance of the music as if it were some beatific blessing. It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music."

Thurston Moore, London, 2025

One Instrument welcomes Morning Seance, composer and sound artist, originally from Italy and based in Vienna. On this debut LP, Morning Seance traces a drifting narrative composed of unstable harmonies, fluid structures, and ghostlike forms. The album unfolds like a dream told in fragments, oscillating between fluctuating pulses and decaying transmissions, from nocturnal stillness to acoustic mirages. The first half of the record moves through zones of suspended tension and evanescent contours, where tracks like “Be faster than your own depression” and “The tenderness of our own autobiography” sketch fragile architectures of affect. The second half enters a more spectral terrain — “Breakfast in a night club,” “A visit to the Brion-Vega tomb” — not places, but agglomerates of sonic sensation, detached from any personal frame.

With each piece, the music dissolves and reconstitutes itself, resisting finality or form, and doing so with an indestructible joy that hums beneath the wreckage. This is degenerate ambient music: anti-geometric and subject to emotional weather — not a refuge, but a slow collapse of structure and purity, where atmosphere gives way to excess and disobedience.

The album is crafted entirely from a single source: the Roland Alpha Juno-1. Despite this constraint, it achieves a vast sound spectrum, transforming one synthesizer’s voice into a layered landscape of textures and moods.

The electronic music of Morning Seance is built on constant variation and intricate, looping patterns with no clear beginning or end. This variation is not simply applied to an audio element, but enacted as a compositional logic — avoiding mechanical combinations and obvious rhythms. The result is a mutable mass of audio matter and tonal debris, guiding the listener through richly divergent environments.

On Beacon Hill: at twilight we find Anthony Moore, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of Slapp Happy and the "70s progressive art rock scene, at guitar and piano. With the atmospheres and accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of multivarious music making. This new delivery system is unto a séance, a communal incantation, twining Anthony"s avant and pop traditions together in a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music; a rope to lower the listener through cobwebs and murk, unveiling new life beneath Anthony"s mad old lines. AKA are Anthony Moore, Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson. A pagan family of sound worshipers hailing from that unholiest of all places: Hastings UK, home of Crowley and Turing. Like their sinister forbears in that infamous tradition, this latest trinity shares a passion for subverting pattern and number, factoring unlikely permutations arising from sea and horizon, greensward, the southerly aspect, and the planisphere as half-world. Their equatorial shore speaks of a planet of water and earth, fire and air. AKA"s humble tools of choice for this endeavor are guitar, piano, organ, synthesizer and vocals. The Friends of AKA are Tullis Rennie, trombone and electronics; Olie Brice, double bass; Richard Moore, violin; and Haydn Ackerley, guitar. They too navigate the shoreline of the south coast, haunt the same taverns and regularly play together in whatever combinations fit the bill. Leaving the drums (and their drummer) at home to realize anew these dreamladen songs, AKA & Friends ensure that the notes fall around the beat and not on it, so as to define the pulse with absence. As such, time is liberated, prised free from the merciless clock; a rhythm of waves, passing through a steady-state universe of no beginnings and no endings. Discontinuities are dissolved, all is transition.

Die deutsche Metalcore-Band Annisokay, 2007 in Halle (Saale) gegründet, hat sich stetig zu einer der spannendsten Heavy-Acts Europas entwickelt. Seit ihren frühen Demos und selbstveröffentlichten EPs hat die Band sechs bedeutende Releases herausgebracht – darunter die »Abyss Pt I & II EPs« – sowie fünf Studioalben, von denen jedes einen deutlichen Entwicklungsschritt in Sound und Reichweite markiert.

Live sind Annisokay ebenso unaufhaltsam: Mit der Abyss Tour und vor allem der »Abyss Pt II Europe«-Tour haben sie ihre explosive Bühnenenergie auf ein neues Level gehoben. Letztere gilt als die größte Headline-Tour ihrer Karriere mit 30 Shows in 14 Ländern, begleitet von ihren bislang größten Festivalauftritten, unter anderem beim Summer Breeze und Wacken Open Air.

2025 steht die Band kurz davor, diese Ära mit »Abyss – The Final Chapter« abzuschließen – Veröffentlichung im November 2025. Dieses Werk vereint Pt I und Pt II zu einem kraftvollen Gesamtstatement und markiert den Höhepunkt ihres bislang ambitioniertesten Projekts.

Die deutsche Metalcore-Band Annisokay, 2007 in Halle (Saale) gegründet, hat sich stetig zu einer der spannendsten Heavy-Acts Europas entwickelt. Seit ihren frühen Demos und selbstveröffentlichten EPs hat die Band sechs bedeutende Releases herausgebracht – darunter die »Abyss Pt I & II EPs« – sowie fünf Studioalben, von denen jedes einen deutlichen Entwicklungsschritt in Sound und Reichweite markiert.

Live sind Annisokay ebenso unaufhaltsam: Mit der Abyss Tour und vor allem der »Abyss Pt II Europe«-Tour haben sie ihre explosive Bühnenenergie auf ein neues Level gehoben. Letztere gilt als die größte Headline-Tour ihrer Karriere mit 30 Shows in 14 Ländern, begleitet von ihren bislang größten Festivalauftritten, unter anderem beim Summer Breeze und Wacken Open Air.

2025 steht die Band kurz davor, diese Ära mit »Abyss – The Final Chapter« abzuschließen – Veröffentlichung im November 2025. Dieses Werk vereint Pt I und Pt II zu einem kraftvollen Gesamtstatement und markiert den Höhepunkt ihres bislang ambitioniertesten Projekts.

From the humdrum to the huge; Tiia explores heartbreak, disappointment, climate change, and dying house plants. The record plays with contrasts, light and shadow, fizz and gloom. Keys melt into darker textures before guitars and drums lift them back into sparkle. It's heaviest moment is the title track, written in an airport bathroom after Tiia's father passed, yet even here, hope breaks through in irresistible vocal harmonies and inventive melodies. "To me, 'Kind Eyes' is a feelings record," Tiia says. "The grief for my dad passing sits at the centre and expands towards the edges, but there's a range of other feelings too. Sometimes they're hard to pin down and navigate but the songs are my map, trying to chart where you are and where you're going. And listeners should remember that sometimes X does mark the spot."

Lead single 'Healing' hits like a mascara- smeared midnight drive through Lynch's America. First sketched with Prince in mind, it finally found its teeth on a long, lonely walk in north-east London: a rock song hiding in plain sight. Tiia says "As soon as I had a rough idea for the driving beat, I knew I had to get Sean Berry (fellow bandmate from the once mighty Comet Sands) involved on the guitar, and the hooks all fell into place". Dusted with plush keys, on 'Numbers Game', Tiia leans into classic rock drama - warmth turning suddenly cold, the floor falling away from underneath you. "The lesson here is don't spy on your exes, but when you do, be prepared to write a song about it. It was the first track I asked Paul Rains (of Allo Darlin' fame) to play guitar on and he instantly got where I was trying to go with it. Now he's my partner, I have no idea how he feels about the lyrics!" Tiia laughs. Having also worked with Tiia's previous cult all-girl indie band The Minor Characters, Seb Kellig lent his trademark dub- inspired production influences at the legendary sonic heaven of Sausage Studios, east London, which Tiia calls "My happy place".

Tiia will again be playing keys for Allo Darlin's four UK tour dates this October followed by tour dates as Count Jaakola. 'Kind Eyes' is set for release 21st November 2025 via Tip Top Recordings (Mandrake Handshake, Japanese Television, Pearl & The Oysters, Golden Toad).

Leviathan Whispers is an album of longings, laments, deliriums and drones, savage and sublime. Within are breaths, hums and bone songs for shadows and fl ames to dance to. Tim Hill is an inspirational fi gure within the UK arts, jazz, noise and improv world. A shapeshifting maverick exploring Britain's diverse musical traditions, from rough music to industrial folk, free jazz to dub, post-punk to avant-rock, incorporating ambient electronics, hymns and noise. Having worked with pioneering arts company Welfare State International, Tim’s performed inside Stonehenge, on the back of trucks at Notting Hill Carnival, leading giants through the streets of London, Dublin and Galway, at Olympic Torch events, celebratory feasts and leading humanist funerals. Tim is also festival director for The Sound of the Streets, a charity promoting outdoor music and musical director of the Wye Valley River Festival where he helps street bands across the country including The Big Noise in Taunton and Horns of Plenty in Oxford.

Leviathan Whispers is a spectral, contemplative selection of Tim's recorded work, including material created for art installations, outdoor projects, solo performances and personal meditations. Inspired by landscape and the eternal pull of Blake's Albion, baritone, alto and soprano saxophones are mixed with tape loops, old synths, recycled live recordings, woodwinds and reeds. Other sounds are processed by Colin Potter (Nurse With Wound) and drone artist Jonathan Coleclough. The album artwork and accompanying videos feature sound sculptures by Michael Fairfax (Royal Society of Sculptors) alongside unsettling visuals by fi lm-maker and junk-alchemist David Young. "an amazing player - there's a weight to his music with a wonderfully dark edge" Corey Mwamba / BBC Radio 3 Fans of Colin Stetson, John Surman, Anna Von Hausswolff , William Basinski and La Monte Young will fi nd much to savour on this new 12" LP. LAUNCH PARTY: we're holding a special launch event with a live performance and talk by Tim Hill on Saturday, 15th November inside a beautiful Victorian chapel beneath Royal Berks Hospital, Reading.

Brand new music from the space cavern for 2025. "Intersatelital" is the new exploration in sound from Vinnum Sabbathi, encompassing the relationship between us humans and the machines we have created to aid in our quest towards the expansion and conquest of space beyond our home planet, taking special focus on a pivotal point in time for Mexico. Back in 1985, two satellites (Morelos I & II) were put in orbit under the NASA missions STS-51-G and STS-61-B. These satellites became crucial for advancing communications in Mexican territory and were controlled and monitored by Mexican engineers in the heart of Mexico City. Mission STS-61-B also featured the first-ever Mexican astronaut, Dr Rodolfo Neri, who set several experiments in orbit as well as taking photo documentation of the country from space, and, with all of this, Mexico entered a new era of technology and communications. A sonic testament of the intricate human-machine comradeship from the last century.