Provincial Echo

by The Form Group

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about

For fans of Fennesz, Eno's On Land, Ryoji Ikeda

The Form Group (guitarist Matt Ashton from The Leaf Library) presents an album of grainy, metallic drones, stretched and vaporised Youtube rips of bird sounds and missile launches, plus minimal bleeps, tones and the occasional thudding bass hit. A departure from the indie pop of his main band, these eight tracks are an exercise in unsettled minimalism, circular tracks that build and drift in atypical directions, tiny flickers of melody ingrained in the textures and washes in the far flung stereo fields.

The album first began to coalesce around the opening track, named after a comic by the artist Gareth Hopkins. “As soon as I saw the title of Gareth’s story written down I wanted to try and reproduce the sound I could hear it making in my mind”, says Matt. Other inspirations came from Samantha Harvey’s contemplative International Space Station-set Orbital and an intense Ryoji Ikeda exhibition in Helsinki, the sparse high pitched tones and weighty bass of the sound sculptures invoking further grand thoughts of wide open spaces (be it outer space or just home counties housing estates).

Mostly recorded while Matt was living for a bit in the Finnish capital, a lack of instruments to hand resulting in a focus on the laptop. “I’ve been a big fan of Fennesz since the Venice album, and love the textures that he can get out of just a laptop and some software. I’ve always wanted to try and produce something with a similar feel”. The result is an album of unsettling minimalism, an edge-of-the-surburbs document perfect for the shortening days.

credits

released November 7, 2025

All tracks written, produced and mixed by Matt Ashton, except track 5 made with Mark Cremins
and track 8 with Daniel Fordham

Recorded in London, Helsinki, Amsterdam and Grosmont between October 2020
and February 2025

Mastered by Ben Holton

Cover Photography by Mark Prestage / driftpress.com
Insert photography by Ben Holton / birds in the brickwork
Layout by Ben Holton

Titles from works by Gareth A Hopkins (1 - A Dream Of A Beach During A Storm In Winter),
Samantha Harvey (3 - Orbital) and Frank O’Hara (5,7 - Lunch Poems)

Thanks to: Alice, Lewis, Fleur, Iain, Gareth, Mark C, Daniel, Mark P and Ben

Wayside & Woodland Recordings Ltd 2025

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about

Wayside & Woodland Recordings England, UK

Wayside & Woodland Recordings was founded by Ben Holton and Rob Glover, and is based in South Staffordshire & The West Midlands.

The home label of epic45, Birds in the Brickwork, The Toy LIbrary, My Autumn Empire, Charles Vaughan and The Balloonist

And has released works by E.L. Heath, Component#4, Richard Youngs, Oliver Cherer, They Go Boom and Mark Van Hoen.
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