Murmurations

For those who remember Simian Mobile Disco from their best-known albums, 2007 debut ‘Attack Decay Sustain Release’ and its followup, ‘Temporary Pleasure’, ‘Murmurations’ might come as something of a surprise. But fans who’ve kept up with their experimental production in the intervening years know that this is a duo who eschew anything close to a signature sound in favour of exploring techniques outside of their, and their listeners’, comfort zones. Named after undulating formations of starlings, sixth album ‘Murmurations’ is about movement and space as much as their earlier albums were about minimalism and melody; from start to finish, it has the feel of sounds bouncing off the walls of a vast chamber.

Loss is the long-awaited and anticipated follow-up to Marcus Fischer’s acclaimed Monocoastal (2010). Fischer created Loss over several years, finding inspiration to complete it during his time at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida, in early 2017. The album is a particularly emotional work as Fischer explored what loss means to him and how to cope with the permanence of absence. The result is decisively somber and perhaps one of the darkest, most emotional albums in the 12k catalog…

Last Days debut, 'Sea' told the story of one man's journey. Now with his 5th album, 'Seafaring', Graham Richardson returns to the sea to examine a range of vocations and exploits adrift. Drawing inspiration from shipping routes, to Ernest Shackleton and his crew's ill-fated voyage on the Endurance, to families being disjointed and reunited, Seafaring goes some way to hint at what the oceans present to us. Seafaring reflects on it's subject matter by coherently linking moments that are minimal and still, to those that are compelling and cinematic.