Lawrence English: Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds

2025 is a flagship year in waiting for Lawrence English. The antipodean keeper of the realm for all things experimental, the Brisbane composer has drafted in a swathe of equally vital guests from across the esoteric landscape for his latest full-length release, Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds.

It’s timely, given many of the artists who feature here have also been a part of English’s Room40 label, which celebrates its twenty-fifth year in operation. Churning out releases as fierce any underground label across the world, in its own way, Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds ties the Lawrence English story together.

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With appearances from Jim O’Rourke, The Necks’ Chris Abrahams, Amby Downs, Chuck Johnson, Claire Rousay, Dean Hurley, JW Paton, Madeleine Cocolas, Norman Westberg, Vanessa Tomlinson and Stephen Vitiello, Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds is a single composition split into eight parts, resulting in one of the most accomplished pieces English has committed to tape.

Inspired by an architectural form in sound, it’s a space where English is well versed – his 2021 collaboration album with Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart as HEXA, scouring similar frontiers. There’s more of an intoxicating nature to this piece, though. Constructed around two long form sound prompts that each of his guests have responded and contributed to, Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds possesses the kind of cadence that’s best listened to on a loop.

The opening passage, a thick, undulating blanket of fog where Abrahams cuts through with a doom-laden piano line. Such as the heavy atmosphere of gloom that the listener is confronted with, it’s like a communication between different worlds.

That continues on part II where JWPaton parts with the kind ship-into-the-port drone that slowly forms a new backdrop. So too the involvement of Johnson, whose subtle pedal steel inflections on part IV are crafted meticulously and placed ominously into the mix by English.

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The ghostly pulse of part VI sees Rousay and Thompson add another layer of mystery to this sonic tableau, while the thin razor-wire drones O’Rourke has mastered over the last couple of decades darkens the tone of this brooding wall of sound. As is often the case, it’s Abrahams who has the final say, gracefully floating across the ivories and guiding English across lonesome channels into the great unknown.

It’s a stirring end to Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds – one of the most dynamic releases within the Lawrence English canon. Emotive and moody, with so many contributions from artists occupying different parts of that above-noted esoteric landscape, it’s a beautiful intersection of deep-listening and psychedelia, almost like a soundtrack to an upside-down world.

Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds is out now via Room40. Purchase from Bandcamp.