quête:rival consoles now is

*Ltd Coloured Vinyl on Transparent Blue Vinyl* London-based musician and producer Ryan Lee West, aka Rival Consoles, creates driving, experimental electronic music that makes synthesisers sound human. His consistent desire to create a more organic, living sound, sees him forming pieces that capture a sense of songwriting behind the machines.

‘Now Is’ marks a new chapter in an ongoing quest for refinement and evolution. More playful and melodic, the album draws from much experimentation in minimalist songwriting and seamlessly blends synthesisers and acoustic instruments. “There are some pieces that are influenced quite strongly by the isolation and anxiety of these times. There are also pieces which are more optimistic and vibrant, which I think is a consistent attitude of my records, as I want art to express many aspects of life.”

From the elevating arrangements of ‘Beginnings’ and motorik beats of ‘World Turns’, to the isolation of ‘Frontiers’, influenced by the barren landscapes of Iceland, Rival Consoles’ eighth studio album subtly morphs and evolves. “The title of the record ‘Now Is’ interests me because it is the beginning of a statement, but it is incomplete. I like art that is open and suggestive of ideas even if they are inspired by very specific things. With my previous record ‘Overflow’ being very dark, heavy and almost dystopian, I wanted to escape into a different world with this music and ended up creating a record which is a lot more colourful and euphoric.”

For the sonic ‘Vision of Self’, West looked to create the kind of movement and colour a string section in an orchestra would construct, but with synthesisers. “I think there’s a lot of synergy between the two worlds. I wanted to create a hypnotic journey, where the synths and sounds weave in and out of each other, so you get lost in the music and don’t know where one sound starts or another ends.” This “journey” West refers to is symbiotic of the way he has approached music throughout a progressive career – an ongoing project that is never static and always moving forward.

A sense of euphoria is reached with the pulsating title track which bursts into colour like the appearance of the summer sun, while ‘Echoes’ is a vivid exploration of rhythm and sound for summer nights. The track starts with a dense collage of modular synths, fragmented metallic tones, broken sounding drums and a downcast melodic synth line. “This is a piece where the main melody has been in my head for a long time and was just waiting to come out. I kind of think of it as the sonic equivalent to an impressionist painting in that I wanted to explore the sensation of lots of small layers of different colours and textures that are constantly moving around each other.”

Rival Consoles is set to appear at festivals across Europe this summer, with headline shows expected to follow in the autumn.

**LIMITED 500 UK COPIES ON BLACK VINYL** VINYL ONLY RELEASE for RSD: Rival Consoles, UK producer Ryan Lee West, shares his original score for MindsEye, the highly anticipated narrative-driven game from Build A Rocket Boy, the studio led by visionary game director Leslie Benzies. The industrial techno score doesn’t just accompany the game, it’s embedded in the code of the world they have created together. The full score sees its debut on vinyl for the first time as a limited-edition Record Store Day 2026 release.

Set in Redrock, a sprawling desert metropolis ruled by surveillance and automation, MindsEye follows Jacob Diaz, an ex-soldier haunted by fractured memories. As his personal mission escalates, he’s forced to navigate a world shaped by rogue AI, militarized tech, and a fragile grip on control, all while confronting the truth about his past. "In MindsEye, sound is a critical storytelling layer, from ambient detail to emotional drive, every element is designed to shape how players feel inside the world," said Craig Conner, audio director at Build A Rocket Boy. "Rival Consoles’ tracks brought something truly special to that vision. Ryan’s music adds a distinct emotional charge and texture that elevates key moments. It doesn’t just accompany the game, it sharpens its edge, deepens its atmosphere, and perfectly complements the world we’ve built." The score was produced over the span of three years in his London studio, and contains some of West’s most ambitious and heaviest compositions to date.

To coincide with today’s release of the game, the 10-track score is now available to stream in its entirety. MindsEye follows West’s previous scoring work, including bespoke music for 2019’s Black Mirror episode Striking Vipers, featuring ‘I Love This, I Love You’, 2022’s Netflix feature doc El Caso Figo about the legendary football player Luís Figo, and Alexander Whitley’s contemporary dance production Overflow, which was released as a studio album with the same name in 2021. The most recent Rival Consoles album, Landscape from Memory, was released in July 2025 to critical and fan acclaim. A world tour continues into mid-2026.

Midori Hirano and Brueder Selke"s debut album Split Scale unites two artists who share both inimitable skill and depth of expression. Pillars of Berlin"s new music community and globally lauded composers, they each share a background in classical tradition while practicing on the cutting edge of modern music. Split Scale is an elegant emotive ambient album built primarily from pianos and cello and electronics. After tracks on Longform Editions and the creation and curation of the Q3Ambientfest, this power pairing should be an immediate hit with fans of quality ambient or minimal modern music. As Brueder Selke, the polymath duo brothers Daniel and Sebastian Selke"s interdisciplinary partnerships are vast and include classical institutions like the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and Filmorchester Babelsberg. The brothers have additionally been working as musical directors of the Schaffrath Chamber Orchestra and curating their own festival Q3Ambientfest which has featured the likes of fellow artists such as Laura Cannell, Mabe Fratti/Resina, Jules Reidy, Grand River, Yair Elazar Glotman, and now-collaborator Midori Hirano. Midori Hirano"s mastery of sound sculpting has put her in high demand as a composer for film and television, including recent soundtracks for All or Nothing, Tokito, and a documentary on the Premier League, alongside astounding collaborations with artists including Hprizm of Anti Pop Consortium and Ilpo Väisänen of Pan Sonic. In addition to her own composing, Hirano has remixed the likes of Robot Koch and Rival Consoles. Split Scale, the group"s first album together, follows a series of live collaborations. The artists chose a simple concept, following a western scale from beginning to end, and from this created a suite of sublime, synesthetic soundscapes and cinematic movements. The vivid tapestry of sound and color is luminous and emotive.

Midori Hirano and Brueder Selke"s debut album Split Scale unites two artists who share both inimitable skill and depth of expression. Pillars of Berlin"s new music community and globally lauded composers, they each share a background in classical tradition while practicing on the cutting edge of modern music. Split Scale is an elegant emotive ambient album built primarily from pianos and cello and electronics. After tracks on Longform Editions and the creation and curation of the Q3Ambientfest, this power pairing should be an immediate hit with fans of quality ambient or minimal modern music. As Brueder Selke, the polymath duo brothers Daniel and Sebastian Selke"s interdisciplinary partnerships are vast and include classical institutions like the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and Filmorchester Babelsberg. The brothers have additionally been working as musical directors of the Schaffrath Chamber Orchestra and curating their own festival Q3Ambientfest which has featured the likes of fellow artists such as Laura Cannell, Mabe Fratti/Resina, Jules Reidy, Grand River, Yair Elazar Glotman, and now-collaborator Midori Hirano. Midori Hirano"s mastery of sound sculpting has put her in high demand as a composer for film and television, including recent soundtracks for All or Nothing, Tokito, and a documentary on the Premier League, alongside astounding collaborations with artists including Hprizm of Anti Pop Consortium and Ilpo Väisänen of Pan Sonic. In addition to her own composing, Hirano has remixed the likes of Robot Koch and Rival Consoles. Split Scale, the group"s first album together, follows a series of live collaborations. The artists chose a simple concept, following a western scale from beginning to end, and from this created a suite of sublime, synesthetic soundscapes and cinematic movements. The vivid tapestry of sound and color is luminous and emotive.

Ein außergewöhnliches Album und eine geradezu bewusstseinserweiternde Klang-Erfahrung. Zwei Jahre nach seinem großen Erfolg "Persona" aus 2018 kehrt der Londoner Elektro-Musiker und Produzent Rival Consoles endlich mit dem rundum überzeugenden "Articulation" zurück Das Album entstand als konzeptionelles Experiment, das erforschen will, inwieweit visualisierte Strukturen sich musikalisch umsetzen und hörbar machen lassen. Während des Schreibprozesses zeichnete Ryan Lee West (aka Rival Consoles) also konkrete Formen und Muster von Hand, um zu versuchen dem Entstehungsprozess elektronischer Musik eine haptisch erfahrbare und vom Computer vollständig losgekoppelte Grundstruktur zu geben. Dazu passend wurde der Albumtitel gewählt, der sich auf ein Stück des zeitgenössischen Avantgarde-Komponisten Györgi Ligeti bezieht, weil dieses eine ganz ungewöhnliche grafische Partitur hat. Die Idee, analoge Zeichnungen und Werkzeuge zur Entwicklung digitaler Kreationen zu verwenden, ist deutlich hörbar: Auf "Articulation" beschwören grüblerischen Techno-Nummern, nostalgische Ambient-Meditation, pulsierende Soundscapes traumwandlerische Stimmungen herauf. Die Zeichnung wird zu Klang und Rhythmus und diese zur frei fließenden Energie.

A new compilation titled Erased Tapes _+ù_¦ö, encompassing a two hour cross-section of the label"s 15-year history including hidden gems and previously unreleased material, will be available on November 4 to coincide with specially curated festivals in London and Berlin. The first offering comes from UK producer Kevin Richard Martin aka The Bug and Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit who share their paranormal first collaborative cut After the Storm amongst other unique pairings such as The Art Ensemble of Chicago featuring Moor Mother, Bell Orchestre interpreted by Colin Stetson, Douglas Dare joined by The London Contemporary Orchestra and Ben Lukas Boysen remixed by Kiasmos. Premiered exclusively via The Wire magazine in form of a free download ahead of their debut live performance at Le Guess Who? Festival 2019 in Utrecht, the track is now finally made available on vinyl and streaming platforms alongside other previously unreleased pieces from electronic producer Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles and Icelandic composer Högni. "As a solo vocalist and voice artist, I"d always dreamed of floating and being drowned in a beautiful sonic storm. And then I met Kevin Martin" - Hatis Noit The artwork is composed of the Japanese kanji for "15" - calligraphed by label founder Robert Raths and designed by Munich-based artist Bernd Kuchenbeiser.

Sunda Arc are brothers Nick Smart and Jordan Smart. Best known as key members of folk and jazz influenced minimalists Mammal Hands, their Sunda Arc project takes inspiration from the likes of Jon Hopkins, Rival Consoles, Moderat and Nils Frahm as well as their own music world. Their debut EP 'Flicker' was released in December 2018 and now the duo are set to release their debut LP, 'Tides' on 7th February 2020.

Named for a volcanic arc in the Indian Ocean, created by the process of massive tectonic plates colliding, Sunda Arc strives to mingle electronic and acoustic sounds until they become almost indistinguishable from each other. It's a process where they draw the acoustic properties and quirks out of electronic sounds and find the electronic potential in acoustic sounds. "Finding the ghost in the machine or blending the human elements of playing live is something we are always trying to explore in our work.

Experimentation is a large part of our process and we tend to combine carefully composed material with chaotic ideas to find the balance between the two" — Sunda Arc 'Tides', their debut album, takes its name from the idea of unseen forces that can affect our lives in myriad ways, being pushed and pulled and at the whim of powerful forces outside of our control as well as offering a nod to things such as the tides on our planet, tectonic plate movements and weather systems. There are often chaotic elements in these systems that function in a way that produce a type of controlled randomness on a large scale. This is something they try to reflect in their music by adopting some of the ways these systems work into musical sequences, and using ideas such as chaos theory to control musical parameters. "Tides is a reference to themes we were thinking a lot about during the making of this album. These include the similarities between macro and micro systems, or the circulatory and nervous systems in the body. Things that produce a type of controlled randomness on a large scale". — Sunda Arc 'Hymn', the first single from the album, uses Nick's voice sampled and played back through a keyboard to create a human yet electronic feel.

It mixes soft vocals with heavier electronic elements to create a danceable yet human sound world. 'Dawn', is best described as uplifting-techno, its use of repeated phrases building in intensity and variations to put you into a hypnotic state whilst also being industrial and danceable. 'Daemon' is one of the tracks that really resonates live. Drawing on the sound of UK dubstep it's intense but fun and the bass clarinet blends with synths at the end to create a sound almost like a vocal. 'Secret Window' brings forward another side of the band, focusing around a lo-fi recording of felted piano and bass clarinet.

These are blended with granularised and processed versions of themselves which emerge like ghosts of the instruments throughout the track. 'Cluster' is another key track. It utilises a small group of notes looped in an unusual way to create a sense of cascading patterns over a solid danceable drum groove. It emphasises soprano sax blended into the sound world half-way through to lift into the final section.

Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles announces details of his highly anticipated new album Articulation, released on Erased Tapes on 31 July 2020.
‘Articulation’, the lead track and album centrepiece, links the record back to the analogue fluidity and colour of 2016’s Night Melody. The division of varying time signatures, intertwined with a complex structure of notes, creates an expression of a moving structure and conjures a dreamy motorik energy. Ryan Lee West explains, "The title track is about articulation and playfulness with shape and time. Its structure is very machine-like, but I was really interested in how melody and sense of story could develop out of this, and it became an exploration of mathematical structures - patterns and shapes having a conversation. I love that something on paper can appear rigid and calculated, but then take on new meaning based on the context that surrounds it, or how it changes over time."
Articulation (which follows 2018’s Persona) was conceived with a very visual way of thinking, unusual for the London musician and producer. During the writing process Ryan drew structures, shapes and patterns by hand to try and find new ways of thinking about music, giving himself a way to problem-solve away from the computer. The album title references a piece by the avant-garde contemporary composer Györgi Ligeti, though not for its music, but for the non-traditional graphic score that accompanied it.
“I find electronic music is often battling to say something with integrity because technology and production can easily get in the way. I think the goal of a lot of electronic composers is to find a balance between the vision of the idea and the power of possibilities on the computer. With a pen and paper sketch you can compose and rethink ideas without technology getting in the way, so for me it acts as a very helpful tool to refresh the process.” - Ryan Lee West
The idea of using analogue drawings and tools to bolster digital creations can be heard in the structure of the pieces that make up Articulation from the broody techno opener ‘Vibrations on a String’ all the way to the album’s boundless closer ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’. While the anthemic rise and fall of ‘Still Here’ and the beatless ambient meditation ‘Melodica’ evoke a certain nostalgia, ‘Forwardism’ achieves the very opposite by burying its melody within the fast-paced rhythm of its pulsating synths.
Rising out of birdsong heard from his studio window, ‘Sudden Awareness of Now’ has a particular urgency about it and seems to perfectly capture a longing for escape. Built around a simple and repetitive melodic theme, expanding and retracting over the course of its seven-minute odyssey, Lee West explains; “I like the fact that if you say something over and over again in music, then over time it can become something else, something reflective.”
Since the release of Persona, Ryan Lee West has taken his captivating live A/V set to all corners of the world. Last seen live on stage with 17 players of the London Contemporary Orchestra for a sold-out orchestral performance at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in January 2020.
Meanwhile Lee West has kept busy. After contributing an exclusive track titled ‘Them Is Us’ to Adult Swim’s coveted Singles series, he recently shared the beautifully textured solo piano piece Winter’s Lament on this year’s Piano Day. He has also been in high demand as a composer, scoring Charlie Brooker’s much talked about Black Mirror episode Striking Vipers, composing original music for Secret Cinema presents Stranger Things as well as renowned choreographer Alexander’s Whitley’s groundbreaking new work Overflow which was set to premiere at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre this spring.
Articulation will be available worldwide on 31 July, with live activities to be announced as soon as the situation allows safe event planning

A1 is 'On You', Loyal Hardware's minimal, moody, breakbeat tune that caught the attention of EDiT
(GlitchMob); Perera Elsewhere (FoF) and Luckyme's Jacques Greene who played the single across NTS, The Lot Radio and in his BBC Radio 1 'After Party playlist' with Monki; describing that 'it touches on the DNA of club music' with 'all these moments of beauty... it's got this mix of sorta' heavy drums but it's more vibey than it is a hard hard track'.

'Dust' and 'Round Here' accompany on the B-Side of Loyal Hardware's debut EP, confirming that the
producer who has supported the likes of Lapalux, Rival Consoles, Aisha Devi, Jacques Greene and DJRUM, is one to watch.

'Loyal Hardware EP' is released 17th April via new imprint BRIEF, distributed by ABOVE BOARD. Available to pre-order now, digitally and on limited 12' vinyl.