Description
Ambient masterpiece KLF's "Chill Out" homage jacket design catches the eye first on this buzzworthy release! Limited edition 300-copy clear vinyl specification!
An ambient album spontaneously recorded in a remote cabin on the Devon coast by childhood friends and musician-filmmakers Will Cookson and Tom Haverly. In a place with no electricity or mobile reception, they spliced together field recordings, speech, and fragments from old recordings to complete a nearly 40-minute audio collage.
The inspiration they drew from was the accidentally discovered masterpiece The KLF album Chill Out. Influenced by its approach of reconstructing sound through a free process, they pursued a mix that felt as if The Bomb Squad had made it using only ambient music as their material.
Musically, while incorporating various influences such as Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Virginia Astley, and Andrew Weatherall, it does not stop at mere environmental music, possessing a depth akin to a journey of the mind.
The sounds of traffic, whispers, and nature blend gently together, slowly revealing thoughts of passing time, friendship, and landscapes. It functions both as a soundtrack and as a meditative experimental work.
Limited edition vinyl. The Clear 180g version is limited to 300 copies and includes an obi strip and insert.
A1. Swaledale to Blakeney Straits
B1. Laugharne Estuary to Welcombe Mouth
"This record and film are just lovely. You need this in your life. Moo-Moo!” Balearic Mike (Down To The Sea & Back)
"The album is a perfect companion to the KLF classic, utilising the British countryside as the setting, occasionally reminding you that Mother Nature is not to be messed with.” Strictly Kev (DJ Food)
"A beautiful ambient journey into the landscape, taking the listener from reality to dream state and back again. A mystical realm full of mysterious chanting, rattling trains and sounds from the very depths of the earth."
Lally MacBeth & Matthew Shaw (Stone Club)
Recorded in a remote cabin on the Devon coast, STILL OUT is an album-length collaboration between musician-filmmakers – and childhood friends – Will Cookson and Tom Haverly. A reflection on friendship, landscape and the passing of time, it inspired a road trip from North Yorkshire to North Devon they took together in the summer of 2024, and forms the soundtrack to a film of the same name which had its premiere screening as part of Stroud Film Festival in March 2025.
Like the film, STILL OUT is also an oblique homage to The KLF’s iconic 1990 album Chill Out, which the Gloucestershire-based pair revisited after it turned up unexpectedly a few years back in Tom’s dad’s record collection. Inspired to create their own recording using a similarly free-spirited process, Will and Tom relocated to the Devon coast in late summer 2023, splicing together a 40-minute mix from their personal archive of recordings and found sounds in a remote cabin with no electricity or mobile reception.
"It came together using cut-and-paste techniques, with ongoing shifts and tweaks,” says Will. “The final result was an audio collage that felt like something [legendary hip hop producers] The Bomb Squad might make - if ambient music was the only material in their sample library."
Using ‘ambient’ as a starting-point rather than an end in itself, they took inspiration from across the musical spectrum – classic-period Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Bill Evans, plus outliers such as 80s singer-songwriter Virginia Astley and the late DJ-producer Andrew Weatherall. The connections, though, are anything but obvious as the audio shifts seamlessly from field recordings and spoken-word interludes to mood pieces and snatches of vintage pop.
Edited and assembled using freely available open source programs, the source material was often radically altered using tools such as “PaulStretch”, a digital sound-morphing algorithm that allows users to stretch audio files to extreme lengths.
"When we found ourselves in a creative slump or unsure how to navigate a tricky part, we'd say, ‘Let's put some syrup on it and slow it down,’” says Tom. “That always helped us get back on track during late-night recording sessions at the cabin."
Part-soundtrack, part-meditative experiment, STILL OUT is intended as a reflection on the mental and emotional shift that occurs when stepping away from the routine of daily life – an album that forms a celebration of our ever-changing relationship to the world around us and the mystery of what it means to pass through time and space.
