Nearly a decade ago now, I found myself laying on the floor of London’s esteemed Jazz Café instructed to do so by Australian ambient connoisseur, Lawrence English as he launched into a transcendent musical voyage that placed us floor-dwellers in a truly meditative state. Such is the essence of English’s music that during his twenty or so years in the world of ambient he has established himself as one of the true originals. He’s also incredibly hardworking - consistently producing music either solo or collaboratively and already chalking up his first release of 2025 with Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds.

For anyone familiar with ambient and experimental music, English’s standing needs little explanation. He has worked with an endless list of pivotal artists including Nine Inch Nail Alessandro Cortini, experimental sound musician John Chantler, noise artist extraordinaire Merzbow and of course, the doyen of ambient, William Basinski, in turn creating music that spans genres way beyond that within which he has laid his foundations.

Placing himself very much in the literal centre of sound, English is all about the holistic experience of listening - influenced by a childhood of birdwatching and learning to understand the role of sound in space. While his very first release was 2002’s A Picturesque View, Ignored - an improvised performance as part of Australian combo I/O3, it’s rather fitting that his first solo release, Ghost Towns a year later featured a set of field recordings designed to capture the essence of his surrounding, yet isolated, soundscapes. It was, however, 2005’sTransit on which he properly introduced the ambient electronic sounds that are now such a familiar and marvellous trademark of English’s work. From here he kicked on, releasing a truly admirable number of recordings - just last year saw both the 15^th anniversary re-release of A Colour For Autumn and new work, Chroma, created with his old partner in crime, Loscil.

Now, English is getting 2025 underway with another collaboration that sees him uniting with a whole host of artists and musicians including the wonderful Claire Rousay, JW Paton, the Necks’ Chris Abrahams and Jim O’Rourke. The piece came out of a request by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, who were looking for English to create a sound environment for visitors to experience as they walked around the building – the perfect project for an artist driven by sound and space. It also tapped into English’s belief “that sound haunts architecture…how sound operates in the material world is something that exists at the fundament of our understanding of music, and moreover within the broad church we know as the canon of sound arts.”

On listening, Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds feels like one long form piece – an ambient construction that feels simple, but which is engulfed in complexity, subtlety, delicacy and multiple layers. In fact, it was constructed around two long form sound prompts around which each musician created their own response, the results of which were fed into the work that appears on the album. What is left is a piece of reflective subtly-evolving music that despite its origins stands alone outside of its architectural foundations. Listen here.